Education and Personal Development
Senior 4 · English
Education and Personal Development
Lesson 4 of 5
20 min
Let's begin
Say this sentence aloud: I want to study nursing at university. It is a sentence you may well say in an interview, and it contains all four vowel sounds of this lesson: study has /ʌ/ and /ɪ/; nursing has /ɜː/ and /ɪ/; university has /ɪ/, /ɜː/ and /ə/; and to, spoken quickly, is just /tə/. Kinyarwanda has five vowel qualities, i, e, a, o, u, each short or long. Three of this lesson's sounds, /ɜː/, /ʌ/ and /ə/, are not among them, so they need deliberate practice, and so does the short, relaxed /ɪ/.
Sounds are written between slashes in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which every good dictionary uses. The mark ː means the vowel is long. The mark ˈ comes before the stressed syllable: study /ˈstʌdi/. The pronunciations here are standard British English.
A vowel chart is a map of the inside of your mouth, seen from the side: the front of the mouth is on the left, and the higher a sound is on the chart, the higher your tongue is.
| Sound | How to make it | Words from this unit | Common spellings |
|---|---|---|---|
| /ɜː/ long | Tongue in the middle of the mouth, relaxed; lips neutral or slightly spread; hold it. | nurse, learn, work, first, personal, research, journey | ur (nurse, purpose), er (term, prefer), ir (first, girl), ear (learn, early), or after w (work, world, word), our (journey) |
| /ʌ/ short | Mouth fairly open, tongue low and central, lips relaxed; short and quick. | study, subject, become, money, country, young | u (study, fund), o (come, money, month, love), ou (country, young, enough), oo (blood, flood), oe (does) |
| /ɪ/ short | Tongue high and near the front, but more relaxed and lower than in see /iː/; short. | skill, finish, business, women, English, build | i (skill), y (system, gym), e (English, become), ui (build), u (busy, business), o (women) |
| /ə/ schwa | The middle of the mouth, everything relaxed; very short. Found only in unstressed syllables. | about, career, teacher, doctor, support, certificate | any vowel letter: a (about), e (teacher), o (doctor), u (support), er, or, ar at the end of words |
| Contrast | Minimal pairs (one sound changes the word) |
|---|---|
| /ɜː/ and /ʌ/ | hurt / hut · bird / bud · turn / ton · shirt / shut · girl / gull |
| /ɪ/ and /iː/ | live / leave · fill / feel · still / steal · sit / seat · bit / beat |
| /ʌ/ and /æ/ | cup / cap · cut / cat · fun / fan · hut / hat · much / match |
Schwa is the most common vowel sound in English. It appears wherever a syllable is not stressed, so it moves when the stress moves:
| Word | Pronunciation | Notice |
|---|---|---|
| photograph | /ˈfəʊtəɡrɑːf/ | stress on the first syllable; schwa in the second |
| photographer | /fəˈtɒɡrəfə/ | stress moves to the second syllable; now the first, third and last are schwa |
| career | /kəˈrɪə/ | the first syllable is schwa, not "kar" |
| university | /ˌjuːnɪˈvɜːsəti/ | /ɪ/, /ɜː/ and /ə/ in one word |
| certificate | /səˈtɪfɪkət/ | two schwas, two /ɪ/ |
Weak forms. Small grammar words are usually unstressed in a sentence, so their vowel becomes schwa: to /tə/, for /fə/, of /əv/, a /ə/, can /kən/, from /frəm/, and /ən/. I want to work for a year = /aɪ ˈwɒnt tə ˈwɜːk fər ə ˈjɪə/.
Worked example
Finding the sounds in a sentence: "I want to become a nurse."
Result: /aɪ ˈwɒnt tə bɪˈkʌm ə ˈnɜːs/. Say it slowly, then at normal speed; the schwas should almost disappear.
Warning
Tip
Use a mirror and a hand. For /ʌ/ your jaw drops: put a hand under your chin and feel it fall on cup, more than on nurse. For /ɪ/ your lips are less spread than for /iː/: smile for seat, relax for sit. For schwa, do nothing at all with your lips: it is the sound of a relaxed mouth.
Ə: The Most Common Vowel in English, Tom Scott (about 5 minutes, 2020). Listen for why schwa only appears in unstressed syllables, and count how many schwas you hear in the presenter's examples.
Practice
Key points
Sources and credits
Quick check
Which word has the same vowel sound as 'nurse' /nɜːs/?
