schwa
/ʃwɑː/
noun
- A weak, unstressed vowel sound in many languages, represented by the symbol ə. In English, it occurs in words like 'about' (the first sound) and 'taken' (the last sound).
- The first sound in the word 'ago' is a schwa.
- Linguists use the symbol ə to represent the schwa in phonetic transcription.
- Learning to recognize the schwa can help improve your pronunciation of English.