xkcd #2907: Schwa
xkcd #2907: Schwa
91 comments
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Thank you!
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the link to the wikipedia page with the audio clip really helped, made no sense without that.
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I had no idea what the name of the sound was so I credit being a native speaker and reading the comic out loud with my understanding.
Do read it out loud - the more you exaggerate it the more fun it is.
Cannot believe how smart this guy is. If 10% of the planet were like Randall we would’ve cured cancer like the second time somebody got diagnosed with it.
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Where is the audio clip?
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Never have I needed the explanation more than with this one.
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What kind of fucked-up Forest-Gump accent does Randall have?
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Isn't this only true for a forest gump accent?
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Midwestern possibly. It works with my accent at least
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I bet these sentences sound super weird if you try to pronounce them without using any schwas.
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You would probably just sound like a non-native speaker. I assume it would be similar to weak forms and how weak forms are usually absent from non-native english speech.
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As a non-native speaker, I was kinda confused at first by this comic because in my head the vowels definitely didn't sound all the same. But I personally consider pronunciation of vowels in English to be one of the greatest mysteries in the universe, so no wonder.
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Non-native to where? These aren't all schwa in all English-speaking nations. They're not even all schwa in all US dialects.
Language is crazy.
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Sounds like you're still learning english
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Don't a lot of these use the "strut" vowel (/ʌ/) and not schwa (/ə/) per se?
My transcription would be
/wʌts ʌp? wʌz dʌg gənə kʌm? dʌg lʌvz bɹʌntʃ. nʌʔʌ dʌgz stʌk kəz əv ə tʌnəl əbstɹʌkʃən. ə tɹʌk dʌmpt ə tʌn əv ʌnjənz. ʊχ./
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They merge in many accents merge these two sounds as Dr Geoff Lindsey explains here.
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Thank you for reminding me of this channel, I'd forgotten about it.
Interesting about the merging. Schwa has always been weird for me because in my dialect it can be many sounds. I grew up saying "obstruction" as [ʌbstɹʌkʃɪn] like those around me. Then I hit grade school and was told by a straight-faced teacher that both the first and last syllables in this and similar words were schwas while pronouncing them differently :)
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The point about stress is interesting. I've been playing with pronouncing the phrase, and almost everything tends toward [ɐ] when I speak the syllables one at a time, even the ones I marked with and pronounce as a schwa in normal speech. The notable exceptions are the final schwas in "obstruction" and "onions", which tend toward [ɪ], and the -nel of "tunnel", which is something like [nɫ] (vocalic ɫ) ~ [nəɫ].
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You use the same vowel for 'what' as you do for 'up'?
:confused Australian noises:
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Oh you're Australian. Yeah, most dialects in the US say "what" and "up" with a schwa.
Wut up. The 'u' vowel sound in "up" is the same one in "what" in most American dialects.
The schwa is the same vowel sound in duzza. Wuzza uppa.
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yup
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whut?
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ləl
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Most phonologists I know would probably use wedge for most of these since they're stressed, because schwa is usually considered just an unstressed allophone of a bunch of different English vowels, and not an actual phoneme itself. Also, I have syllabic l in tunnel and barred i in cousin.
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I came here to say this. A bunch of these vowels are definitely pronounced with a wedge. Even tried intentionally pronuncing the stressed vowels with a schwa, and it's noticeably, jarringly off.
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I don't get it.
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As a northern Englishman, this doesn't work for me
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Although if I say it fast and lazily I guess it kinda does
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Going through the comments, I've just learned so much about what makes my accent distinct and that uh and uh are apparently different
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Uh?
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If I'm understanding it correctly, the name Schwartz has no schwa
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True
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look closer. its there
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Took me a goddamn while. Goddamn English and the lack of phonetic spelling!
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I was a little slow too because some of those words have other possible pronunciations
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Which is why we shouldn't have phonetic spelling!
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Not in my accent
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Nor mine 😥
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Nor mine😥
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Holy shit that's impressive
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I love this one. Fucked with my head a bit.
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Aaron earned an iron urn + Baltimore accent.
That video makes me cackle every damn time 🤣.
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This is reminiscent of a brief storyline from the Scrubs season that never happened.
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The trend of dropping all vowels implies schwa subsuming them all.
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Tangentially related to getting stuck in a tunnel obstructed by onions: one time I was stuck in a traffic jam on I-95 in Philadelphia, traffic completely stopped for about three hours. Eventually we got moving again and passed the source of the jam. A semi carrying a load of honeydew melons had caught fire. I would have thought melons contained enough water to prevent them from burning, but that was not the case.
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Maybe those were illegal smoke and honey melons 🤔
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Would love hearing someone saying it out loud. I can't do it myself
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Yet it doesn't have its own letter!
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Hey Splay.
Shiggity shiggity schwa?
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What's my name? Shmifty five.
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obstrucTION
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Ub struck shun
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This is like when my friend from CA discovered merry, marry, Mary except it's everything.
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There's a cool, old video about this. I'm not sure if this is what you're referencing:
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Me, with my strong German accent: chuckle I'm in danger
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dammit Randall stick to physics
actually this is pretty fun even if wrong, keep making linguistics things
91 comments