Ə: The Most Common Vowel in English 

hi Tom Scott

thanks for the video tom

hello tom scott

Hi

Rip

@@geomochi4904 Because what did you want to reply to this ? XD

I love this. Giggling like the sleep deprived lunatic that I am.

This is a beautifully crafted joke

LMAOOO

Brə

can i get some əəəəəəəəəəəəəə

@@naufalap bərgər king foot lettəce

@@schplorgus8140 There's no schwa in burger

əəəəəəəəəəəəəə, əʊˈkeɪ

@@Laittth there is now

your pfp lmao

"əəə..."

Ə

Əə

I mean yeha

XXXXDDDDDD

that was /a/ though

​@@servantofaeie1569 nay

Hello friend look boom ə

Even more uhh for confusion.

Me: Wait wha..?

Everyone else: uh?

comment of the week

Most English teachers are barely teach phonology. Most classes are concentrated on learning vocabulary and phrases.

Sar

lmao

burh

Brəh

æ

He's a Midlander (Brummie, I'm guessing, like Ozzy Osbourne). They all talk like that. Mispronounce the word "bath" (which should have a silent r in it, phonetically).

@@martamatavka He's from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire

@@martamatavka “Should have”? What are you some sort of prescriptivist?

He pronounces it like they do in the midlands and I think the North, but in the South it is pronounced with a strut. Nowhere in his country is it pronounced with a shwa

@@martamatavka How do you have a silent r phonetically? Silent things aren't phonetic.

ləl vərə fənə

@@cerulean22b69 underrated reply tbh

At least schwa still exists. Can't say the same for the second "o" in pronounciation though....

@@Zaire82 just wanted to let you know that he's got it right: there's no second o.

@@MineRoyale. Apparently both are reasonable. "Pronunciation" is the standard spelling, but due to the sensible logic behind "Pronounciation", with it being derived from "pronOUnce", it isn't considered wrong. I believe my spelling is better though, so I'm going to continue using it even though it's not the standard spelling. It makes more sense. Just means my earlier correction is nulled.

Ha Ha Ha/gen

I used the vowels to destroy the vowels

1000th like les go

ə əm ənəvətəble

@@Xneom27 that translation is perfect

Or, the other way around, pronouncing it WETNESSDAY

/wenzdej/?

The dirty 'shwa is used as an insulting moniker for a particular city near Toronto (and its blue collar autoworkers population), potential achieved

@@AbbeyB77 (Oshawa, for the non-Canadians in the room. =3 )

I could imagine linguists using "schwa" as an inside-joke synonym for "basic".

Yessir

@@HaloInverse "Ugh, look at him. He's so schwa"

I was about to comment the same thing! "reduced to schwa" should be an expression!

schwa or shwa? 🧐

I used a vowel to destroy the vowels.

- Whur's muh vuhls? - Gun, ruhdussed tuh schwuh.

Want to get some shawarma? Let's get some shawarma.

Can you give examples of words that fell victim to it?

@@robinrehlinghaus1944 the wa in wa tashi (I in Japanese) is very commonly 'schwarified'

And lots of English speakers would put a stress on the "ta" which is also off.

People in 1400s: I am going to the store. People today: i'm gonna go tda store People 600 years from now: *əəə əəəəə ə əə əəə*

​@@Ratigan2So they're going to speak like Sans? 😄

I kinda wish they had, tbh

@@meganofsherwood3665 me too

Its kinda annoying to so it would need to be modified slightly

@@kylienielsen6975 it's not that hard to write in cursive unlike other letters people suggest

Yes that exactly what I think😂😂

@Rifraf Me too.

yep

Yep 👌🏻😎.

Brə moment

I can see jon getting overly exited about it 😂

Rachel and a good of the audience probably know the difference between orthography and phonology.

Does 'Rachel' actually have a schwa sound or the 'l' comes right after the 'ch'?

@@gabor6259 I think there's a schwa there. It feels like that schwa doesn't disappear comfortably unless a vowel is added after the "l". Though that could just be me.

Like Eye-nd?

@@perodactyl490 similar, but not exactly.

@@gurrrn1102 ok

ayeeee

@@perodactyl490 more like somewhere between "ay-nd" and "air-nd" (if your accent doesn't have r at the end of syllables).

this needs more likes

To be fair, in many languages, and even the New Zealand dialect of English, schwas can be stressed.

@@ishmamahmed9306 Please enunciate

@@TheAlondane , as Tom Scott said about most English dialects, schwas are pronounced where a vowel falls into an unstressed syllable. However, there are languages where the schwa is used as a vowel in stressed syllables.

It sounds like something a stoner would say about the universe

Trigg Ethridge Eminem

I YELLED

emenegv?rede stc:

@@angelvee5093 Why though? I feel like you probably didn't and only commented this to get nonexistent internet points, and that didn't really work.

@@Berilia I did lmao I always squeal/scream/shriek before laughing (ik, annoying, but i have friends so i guess not THAT annoying)

there are seriously people who learned spelling by sound?

@@mrosskne Everyone that has English as their mother tongue

ent vs ant at the ends of words. absolute nightmare.

@@mrosskne you kind of have to when you’re too young to read.

As someone with a much more phonetic spelling in my mother language, I was really confused by the concept of spelling bees. You really need some mess like the english spelling system to make that stuff competitive.

The same is true of grammatical rules as well. Tom I think did a video on adjective word-order which made me realize that it's totally a thing: big brown bear sounds way more correct than brown big bear, but I had no idea it was a formal rule.

@Furret Furret Many people also have problems telling the difference between speaking a sound and writing a letter because they never thought about it.

there are two th sounds

I'm not so sure it's so much not realizing it, but rather, not caring.

Near as I can tell, conscious awareness of phonemes in humans is completely artificial, in the same way we don't normally notice the exact muscle movements we make to move our legs when walking. For a fluent speaker language works completely on intuition, and so we come up with rules that we don't even notice are there until they're pointed out by someone else. Only occasionally do you notice the way your mouthy bits move to make a certain sound. I believe this is why the majority of writing systems evolved a syllabic system, where the consonant and vowels were a single, indivisible unit-the majority of writing cultures conceived of languages as being made up of syllables, rather then consonants and vowels. Alphabets are a complete accident, resulting from the fact that Semitic languages generally don't care about vowels, and so Egyptian heiroglyphs wrote phonetic words using symbols that represented consonants, instead of syllables. So, when the Greeks ended up picking up the Phoenician writing system, they added symbols their language needed, resulting in our modern idea of an "alphabet". Of course, the Greeks weren't some genius for coming up with this system; it was a coincidence of history, and before using the Greek Alphabet, the langauge was written in Linear B, a syllabary.

Chungə rivals James & James for best TTT teams

that actually works. hehe i mean həhəhə

LMAO

[ʔə˦ə˨ʔə˥]

"aonə"

Ə

Help me please

Sar sure thanks ...

Ali babu what

Sar you help me that's I ask you sar thank you

@Benjamin McCann it's not funny unless it's over the top and has dramatic music accompanying Tom holding up the gun

@PolySaken Chaotic Neutral

Which for added fun is of course... German

It's schadenfreude and has nothing to do with the schwa

You know that all languages have schwa? English isnt unique and its closest cousins all have it as well. Only issue there is is that nobody explains the existance of the vowel and then its hard to explain what people mean.

@@kaaskopen1460 : the sound of this joke going "whoooosh" as it flies over your head is best spelled with a schwa.

Hahaha xD

Omenagotethuh store.

it's "uhuguhdduhgoduh STO"

@J God Or threatening depending on how slowly you say it.

I say "go to the" as "gəəəddə"

you won't ever listen to hotel room service like you did before.

Try learning Dutch.

"lemme" add another. ;)

imma finna tryna get people to stop using this word

@@Sparrow420 Lemme is just "let me" though. Imma is "I am going to". That's way longer.

Ah, a classic Thənos quote

"When I am done, half of the words will still have non-ə vowels."

"I used the vowels to destroy the vowels."

"Perfectly Mid Central. As all vowels should be."

"Did you do it? "Yes." "What did it cost?" "Knowing which letter to use."

no that's just the irish accent but written in text

I just make an "ehhh" sound and leave. I guess that makes me a horrible person.

ok

lorddissy dad is that you?

It'll take 2 hours to write it 😂😂😂😂

No, only the Bogans and Upper Middle Class do that. The semi cultured ones like I just umm a lot. Like, a real lot. L

Absofuckinglutely

And acting like every statement is a question?

@@ericforsyth well that's just because we're never sure of ourselves?

@@user-pi1du7vu9e It's an Australian term, and a little tricky to define or give a synonym for. I recommend looking it up on Urban Dictionary; some of the definitions are hilarious

y e s

Did you seriou- _What?_

H O W

You must have no fuckin' clue what an ocean actually is then.

does that really work? did you use any other outlets to learn english? and how long did it take you to understand what was going on? people saying stuff like this has always fascinated me

some reason I instictively read this as bree as in the cheese

@@vylinful3198 what

Brschwa moment

that is a 'capital schwa' which is not used by anyone

/bɹəʰ/

I'm 16 & I'm really interested in linguistics, so can u tell me more about it - wt do u learn, how many types of degrees are thr and which one r u studying. PS: I don't wanna take it up as a career, just interested in learning languages!

Alas, since I only entered university last year it has all been to Zoom and I have missed this

@@FlyingMozzarella not OP, but I might as well answer since I also major in linguistics! There’s different aspects to linguistics, and depending on the program you attend, what you learn might change. There is morphology, synthax, semantics, pragmatics, phonetics/phonology (there’s a slight distinction there) and I guess, sociolinguistics. Some programs are also more scientific and go into language aquisition and neurolinguistics! I’d say it does help with learning languages, especially if you learn the linguistics of whatever language you’re learning.

@@ayellowpapercrown6750 Ok...she's not interested anymore.

english is a joke but it is a good writen language

my L1 doesnt have the vowel, at all! it doesnt seem to actually be that common across languages. instead of "uhhh" we make a sound closer to [ø]

Accent in a sentence? 🤔

@@Thytos aka the stressed syllable

Yes, this is a good rule - for English and also for Russian! - American who has taken college courses in linguistics in English, French, and Russian

i'm Russian and i'm impressed with this advice. I wish someone told me that earlier.

@@meliilosona5272 when i was learning russian i was also taught this about russian. stressed is pronounced properly but most other vowels are schwa

I swear this could have really happened to him lmao

Wow, one year already

I love asdfmovie!

I love this

Ah, asdfmovies...

Speaking of which, Tom Scott himself was a guest voice actor in an asdfmovie skit.

@@yourfriendlyneighborhoodwh752 which one

A famous quote in one of my German textbooks said that you don't know your own language until you've learned a foreign one. Two years of high school German taught me far more about English than 12 years of English classes ever did.

@@davidwise1302 I asked my German teacher at school how come English manages to function without all this subject / object stuff. We weren't taught grammar much beyond noun = "a thing";, verb = "a 'doing word'".

@@davidwise1302 especially one that's related. I learned Latin in highschool, and it really helps to actually show what different parts of the language are and why they are distinct and important.

@@davidwise1302 similar. i learnt more about English grammar and how why stuff is the way it is by taking French at school. In English speaking countries, the most we will get taught are homophones and homonyms.

@@notdaveschannel9843 i assume because English is fairly freeform language where things can be said in multiple orders and mean the same thing, so the only "rules" we have are that a sentence needs a noun/verb and verb/adjective

Well, *I* would never even THINK of reducing the sentence that way. Clearly he’s the reason English has been in consistent decline for decades! Damn linguistic relativists!

I'm getting there....

They would find out if they weren't lazy and wrong.

@@WMDistraction In what world is English in decline?

It can be lazy and correct though.

If I recall correctly, the word is from Hebrew, and it originally had a schwa between the "sh" and "w", which then got lost. Doubly ironic

Is the last vowel not an ə?

Brə.

@@DiMadHatter ləl

@@DiMadHatter yes

@Cubeasauros Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni

Ni

ǝkki ǝkki ǝkii ǝkki bǝtang zoom boing za;sdoifjjgla;

NUUU!

"Are you yelling 'Ni' at that old women"

Shut up before I reduce you to schwa

"No! I'm right! Every word should be spelled how it sounds!" I say as I slowly get reduced to ə

Hahahaha! Indeed: we could use "you miserable little schwa", or "your mother was a bloody schwa, you know?"

For insulting my family, I will reduce you to schwa!

It is kind of ironic you used the word "vulgar" there. Or, was that a subtle pun?

Idk, in my native language (Bulgarian) it isn't that rare for the schwa to be stressed

welp, learned something new today :D

Never? I wouldnt say that. It is stressed in the words: deter, detergent, deterrent, occur

Could be wrong here, but I'd say that's a ɜ: like in 'bird' in all of the words you mention, not a ə.

@@KarolaTea i mean, depends on the accent

FDSKJUOFISDKJF

Amnagudthstor

/ēmēneg^?rede stc:/

Any word that ends in -er

@@andrew7taylor doesn't sound like 'schwa' though.

@@lauragarnham77 well confusedly and contain have it

@@atheniansoldier811 you missed my point. Unless I should be pronouncing them conschwafusedly or schwantain, no, no they don't. ;)

@@lauragarnham77 who says I don't?

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

@@ladofthedamned7796 I completely agree.

@@ladofthedamned7796 100% agree

Ə

A shwaft spot

Hello there

It's all schwa? Always has been.

I'm here before someone says 'dIdN't ExPeCt To SeE yOu HeRe'

schwa

​@@forgedinfaithfarmboys8092 General Kenobi?

Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!

Poh-tay-tiiz?

I'm gonna be honest here, I pronounce it the same way as Samwise.

What's taters, precious?

pə-tə-təs

read sounds the same as lead, but read doesn't sound the same as lead

English is full of diphthongs, saying pure vowels feels really weird to most of us. Unless you're Scottish or Irish, in which case they monophthonganize a lot of them.

In my New Zealand accent it does

Ye I've had the joke since HS when I learned about it: "If you schwa'd a schwa, it would be a schwə"

I pronounce it that way, just because in my world all letter-names should be like Pokémon.

But it does.. Maybe it's just my accent?

reducing "schwa" to "schw-uhhh"

The Schwa Reduction

@@cand0 can i get a beat and some lyrics? i'm interested.

I like the phoneticness of romanian writing. My favorite romanian letter is the archaic d with comma. Like ț ș ,d . It was replaced by z

In my language there is a sound which is very close to the Romanian  but its only used at the end of the words

Looks like a Nordic å with the circle chopped off 😅

@Micheal Rows no stop

Came here exactly to comment this. Crazy how easy we have it in our language.

wait they are pronounced differently?!?

en-fe-nit fhy-naht

I always say finite the way I say infinite.

WAIT KANSAS AND ARKANSAS ARE DIFFERENT?! *o*

@@GachaWolf81900 yea Kansas is pronounced the way its spelled but Arkansas is pronounced Arken-saw

Fun fact: The words "tough, though and through", don't share a single phonetic, including consonants.

(Also, we don't talk about buffalo)

Without the "but". The "though" at the and has the meaning of the "but".

@@arnorbenjaminsson3394 Don't though and through share th?

@@tonystroemsnaes554 Nope. though: /ðəʊ/ resp. /ðoʊ/, through: /θɹuː/, [θɾ̪̊ɵʉ], resp. /θɹu/, [θɾ̪̊ʊu].

I really like this idea

sounds like someone saying suave incorrectly.

Is it Schwayv or schwuv?

@@nintendocaprimoon63 I think it's sh-oo-aah-vuh.

@@kennarajora6532is that 🐵 or 🐒?

I threw əp in thə classroom. We lərnd so məch frəm that. lərnd has a letter that I naturally remove for no reasən.

I'm actually considering trying this

Hacking the mainframe of your local supermarket's website to allow you to get hundreds of items for free? "I am hacking the store website."

Well nowadays wearing a mask to the store is common.

Wearing a mask, briefly considering bringing a gun but then putting it back. "I'm going to the store during a global pandemic".

Pushing a box into someone's hands and gesturing towards the basement stairs? "Store this in my basement."

What's the story behind that?

@@quelebm125 of course those who still believe in it will keep using it, it's their freedom. At least those who don't have to be told they're bad people.

@@francescosacca6674 I meant how has the mid-central vowel caused a ruckus in Italy? How do people "believe in it" and keep "using it"?

Ao spiegati

@@bryanfongo327 sto parlando della controversia che si è scatenata quando la linguista Vera Gheno ha proposto di usare lo ə per i non-binari. Sio ci ha fatto un video. Un altro linguista, Arcangeli, ha scritto una petizione per fermarla, quella che ha firmato anche Barbero. Ci sono stati parecchi scontri su questa questione, di quello sto parlando.

Better call the p'lice ! Lazy linguistical buggers !

"Where are you heading?" *[walks into woods with rifle]* "Goin' hun'in' in th' mowh'ins"

me too!

@@Viviantoga ever drank wood'ah?

@@aweirdounderyourbed8741, no, I drink war-tar.

All it took was Tom not being allowed to leave his house.

@@beskamir5977 I think I have a bit of a plan involving a cage and my basement