Can a schwa occur at the beginning of a word?

1. an unstressed mid-central vowel (such as the usual sound of the first and last vowels of the English word America) Dec 8, 2007 ... Although both mid central and variable schwa can arise via vowel reduction in unstressed syllables, both result from assimilation to context, so ... Dec 17, 2013 ... This question is about the vowel sound referred to using the word schwa, not about the word itself. The schwa is the most common vowel in English. Jan 14, 2025 ... The word "schwa" comes from the Hebrew word shva. When reading Hebrew, two dots beneath a letter indicate a schwa. In English, there isn't a ... Schwa. The Schwa phonics sound (/ə/) is the name of a vowel sound that is found only in unstressed positions in English. It is a sound that is pronounced when ... Sep 9, 2016 ... This letter could be transcribed as [ə], [ɐ] or [ɤ], depending on where it appears in a word. Many languages have letters for the schwa and the similar sounds. It's a pretty lazy sound, like a soft, weak version of a short /u/, and what can be tricky about it is that any vowel can make a schwa sound. We use Schwa for many unstressed vowels/syllables. The vowels a, e, o, u are often pronounced as Schwa when they are unstressed. In the following examples, the ... Apr 13, 2022 ... Schwas make a weak vowel sound and appear in unstressed syllables as well as function words, such as articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and helping and ... Schwa is the most common vowel sound in the English language. In fact, roughly one in five English words has the schwa! It sounds like the short u or sometimes ...