Over COVID, a close friend and videographer, Sue Mitchell helped me put together a series of videos about the most common vowel in English, one you likely have no knowledge of, even more so if you are a native speaker. It is called the schwa, what I refer to as “the lazy vowel”.
The SCHWA is the reduced vowel sound in English which makes your language sound more natural, like a native speaker. Each part of the series looks at the role of the schwa in different contexts. Here is a summary of the five parts:
1. English is a stress-based language
2. Introduction to syllable stress
3. Shifting stress due to suffixes
4. Shifting stress due to nouns and verbs
5. Sentence stress and reduction
This is part 1 of a 5-part series, all 3 minutes or so. If you would like to view all of them, click here to sign up for access. You will learn a little more about how English works. Please share with your friends. And I would love to get any feedback you might have in the comments below.