Jack Davidson
Learning Article : The Most Important Sound In English

Discuss the Article : The Most Important Sound In English

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Language learners sometimes struggle with the rhythm and speed of English. Students can often sound robotic or hesitant because they’re having trouble moving from one word to the next in a fluent way. This article will explain how just one very important sound can completely transform how you understand the English language. Introducing the ‘schwa’!

Sep 21, 2015 12:00 AM
Comments · 25
6

Not something many native speakers can put into words, although we all use the schwa. Some just call it sloppy speaking. Might be a useful topic for my classes one day.

 

September 23, 2015
5

Thank you Mr Davison! Your article is excellent!

I have been struggling with it as a non-native speaker, but now I understand where to insert that neutral sound. 

September 23, 2015
5

Thanks for sharing this Jack! 

As a non-native speaker I had been suspecting that you have these ways of equalizing the vowels (we are doing much the same in Swedish), but you put words on it. And now I see much more clearly! 

September 23, 2015
5

Yeesh, are you from Brooklyn or what?  Well, I can't say much since I'm from Michigan and we can take a whole sentence and condense it into two words.  Ha ha ha.  But for students of English, it's a good point to make that we pretty much stress only one vowel and then mash the rest of them together.  Of course there is the inherent caution not to try to go too fast and thus lose all coherent sounds.

September 23, 2015
3

Funny thing is that I use almost the same words when explaining the Russian pronunciation. We do exactly the same thing, stressing the stressed vowels and simply making 'sounds' for all the rest. 

October 6, 2015
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