The Schwa

The schwa (symbol: /ə/) is the most common sound in the English language. It is a short, unstressed "uh" sound that appears in the unstressed syllables of multisyllabic words. The tricky thing about the schwa is that any vowel letter can make it — a, e, i, o, and u can all say "uh" when they are in an unstressed syllable. This is why words like butter, second, depend, and eleven are so commonly misspelled — the schwa vowel is almost impossible to hear clearly when you say the word naturally. Knowing about the schwa is a powerful spelling tool because it explains why so many vowels in multisyllabic words are hard to predict.