Schwa is an unaccented vowel sound which is found in an unstressed syllable and close to a strong consonant. Schwa appears in almost all multi-syllabic words, and it is the most common sound in the English language.
For a kid-friendly definition: schwa sounds are either trying to hide (unstressed) or lazy (not pronounced properly).
For example:
- In the word āovenā, the schwa is the short e vowel sound which is hiding in the word. When we say āovenā, we completely skip over that sound.
- In āaboutā, the schwa is the lazy short a vowel sound. We donāt pronounce the 'a' properly, it sounds more like a grunt or āuhā sound.
Schwa at a glance:
- Words with i making the schwa sound include animal, activity, pelican
- Words with a making the schwa sound include animal, about, comma
- Words with e making the schwa sound include frozen, sudden, silent
- Words with o making the schwa sound include apron, gorilla, lesson
- Words with u making the schwa sound include album, difficult, upon
- Words with ou making the schwa sound include famous, jealous, obvious
Spelling Frequencies (short vowel schwa)
- i - 37%
- a - 21%
- e - 18%
- 0 - 16%
- u - 5%
- ou - 3%
Spelling Frequencies (r-controlled schwa)
- er - 75%
- or - 16%
- ar - 9%
Rare Spelling Patterns:
- ai (portrait)
- y (oxygen)
- ie (patient)
- eo (pigeon)
- ui (circuit)
- our (colour)
- ur (murmur)
- au (restaurant)
- oi (tortoise)
The following sources were used to compile these percentages:
- Fry, E. (2004). Phonics: A Large Phoneme-grapheme Frequency Count Revised. Journal of Literacy Research, 36, 85-98
- Hanna, P. (1966). Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences as Cues to Spelling Improvement.
- Bishop, M. (1985). The ABCās and All Their Tricks