Objective: Realizing that English is not a phonetic language and learning the important schwa sound.

1. DO NOT think English is a phonetic language that you can just read the words as they are spelled.

What is being offered in Pronunciation Patterns are rules and patterns to assist you in remembering the correct pronunciation, not to make up the pronunciation. If you learn a new word, please look up the dictionary first, then you can see if the rules and patterns in the program apply to the new word. If the rules apply, you can use the rules and patterns to help you remember the pronunciation of the new word.

For example, if you learn the word rote and find out that the word rote follows the silent E rule, then you can use the silent E rule, rather than IPA or APA transcript, to help you recall the correct pronunciation.

You can see that the letter A can have several different sounds: the long A sound, the short A sound, the short E sound in ER sound, the short O sound in AR sound, and the schwa sound. This is what I meant that English is not a phonetic language and you can't just think that the letter A has only one sound.

Now, you can click on other letters such as B, C, D, etc to find out how many sounds they have. In future lessons, you will learn why they have many different sounds according to the rules.

2. It is very important to learn the schwa sound because it plays a significant role in the English sounds.

Unlike many other languages, English is an rhythmic language, meaning speaking English like singing songs. Because of this, you have to learn when to stress and when not to stress when speaking English. If you know which vowel letter in a word should be pronounced as the schwa sound, you will know which vowel to stress and which vowel not to stress. Because the schwa sound is not stressed always, the other vowel should be stressed.

In Pronunciation Patterns, we purposely colored the schwa letter in blue to help you identify which vowel letter is pronounced as the schwa sound. The schwa sound is often represented by an upside down e like ə. As we know that in English, there are five vowel letters which are A, E, I, O, and U, and sometimes Y is also considered as a vowel letter. A in ago, E in latter, I in session, O in random, and U in hopeful, are pronounced as the schwa sound because these letters are not stressed. Therefore, the schwa sound can be considered as an unstressed sound or soft vowel.

In the following example, I highlight the word ago. The letter A in ago is pronounced as the schwa sound and the letter O is pronounced as the long O sound. Therefore, the stress is on GO not the letter A. If you look the diagram, you will see the second part has a strong stress indication.