This sound is so common that it even has its own special name, schwa. Its phonetic symbol looks like this /ə/.

There are two reasons we hear it so often:

#1 Not all the syllables in a word are important, so we don’t pronounce them the same way

We say that the important syllables are stressed, and the unimportant ones are unstressed.

Listen to me pronouncing the words ‘mother’, ‘castle’, ‘careful’ and ‘little’ in the recording below. The first syllable of each word is stressed. Is there anything you noticed about the unstressed syllable in each word? It’s a schwa!

Think about it, you have to be relaxed to pronounce a schwa, why would you put it in a “stressed” syllable! Jokes aside, it’s very important to know that not all the syllables in a words are stressed and that often, the unstressed syllable is a schwa sound.

Listening tip: two-syllable words like ‘careful’ and ‘mother’ are usually stressed on the first syllable.

# 2 Disappearing Sounds

In addition to putting schwa sounds everywhere, in normal, fast speech, to go a bit more quickly, we simply make certain sounds disappear. That’s right, we don’t actually pronounce them at all. Poof, just like a magic, they disappear!

This can be shocking for English learners like you, because you think you have to pronounce everything nice and carefully to be understood. Now, we don’t do this to every sound in the same way; there are some that disappear more often than others.

Listen to these examples first in careful speech and then in less careful, faster speech.

#3 Transforming Sounds

Sometimes it’s actually easier to transform a sound than to make it disappear. It all depends on the next sound, and what our tongue and lips need to do to get there. If the movement is too complex, then we just make it easier and modify the sound.

Listen to these examples:

What is the difference between the careful example and the fast example?

In the fast one, it sounds like I’m saying ‘righ chew are’. This is because it’s difficult to go from the /t/ sound, to the /j/ sound (/j/ is the phonetic symbol for the initial sound of words like ‘you’ or ‘useful’).

What’s quicker and easier is to pronounce is an intermediate sound like /ʧ/ (this is the phonetic symbol for the initial sound of words like ‘church’). This is quite common in English. Some other examples are ‘don’t you’ which sounds like ‘don chew’ or ‘would you’ which sounds like ‘wou chew’.

#4 Linking Or Inserting Sounds

Sounds in fast speech can help each other out.

As you now know, we don’t always pronounce words in a nice, clear way. In fact, often, it’s actually more difficult to pronounce each word clearly, distinctly and individually. What we do instead is, we make links between different words to help us pronounce them.

Listen to me pronouncing “for a while”, “was it” and “what a day” in careful speech. After, listen to me say them quickly.

What do you notice? You should hear me link the consonant sounds at the end of “for”, “was” and “what” with the following vowel sound.

Sometimes, we even add a sound to make our lives easier. Listen to these examples in careful speech. Now listen to me pronouncing them more carefully. It’s difficult to hear, but in each case, I add a sound to help me move between the sounds in the different words.