Schwa /ə/ and STRUT /ʌ/ vowels in EVERY English accent (almost)

How schwa /ə/ (aka commA) and /ʌ/ (aka STRUT) occur throughout the entire English-speaking world, using John Wells's famous "Accents of English" as our guide.
Accents of English by J. C. Wells, Cambridge 1982
www.cambridge.org/core/books/...
English Accents & Dialects by Hughes, Trudgill & Watt, Routledge 2012
www.routledge.com/English-Acc...

[@chrisjohnston3512]

I'm very sad your tour missed Canada, because we definitely have a distinction between strut and schwa! My whole life I've been baffled by Americans respelling schwas with "uh" in pronunciation guides because to me it indicated a strut vowel.

[@juliansmith4295]

Once the Brits gave away the Alaskan panhandle to the US, they've completely forgotten Canada exists.

[@innertuber4049]

I'm pretty sure Canadians still use schwa in "above"

[@chrisjohnston3512]

@@innertuber4049 for the first vowel, but not the second. At least speaking for *this* Canadian and those I learned to speak from.

[@christopherellis2663]

Well, Yanks don't use either, the bus, ă, ë õ ъ to use various European examples

[@khoanguyen0001]

⁠@@chrisjohnston3512As far as I know, Standard Canadian English doesn’t have the distinction. Remember that stress plays a major role in how you pronounce vowels. In some accents, including SCE, unstressed and stressed vowels are differences in place or manner of articulation. In particular, vowels in unstressed syllables have a more central (or "neutral") articulation, and those in stressed syllables have a more peripheral articulation. Ask yourself this: do you pronounce the second “u” in “cucumber” and the “u” in “industry” the same? If yes, then you don’t differentiate between the STRUT vowel and the schwa. Why? Because both are unstressed.

[@igor-yp1xv]

I'm not a native speaker of English and I've always been interested in linguistics in general, but I've only recently started studying phonetics and this video totally blew my mind, never seen anything like this before. I'm gonna binge watch your channel.

[@tinfoilhomer909]

If you want a wild ride, take a look at Wikipedia's page called "International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects".

[@noodletribunal9793]

i wish my other languages were as fluent as yours

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

As a 7th generation Australian, I believe that our accent has a partial strut-schwa merger. While you are correct that the two sounds are distinct in certain words, this is not always the case and it can be quite difficult to determine which to use when writing phonetically. Having discussed this with my father, he seems to find the distinction clearer. This may indicate that it's disappearing in the younger generation (though probably not in Adelaide given their reputation).

[@mitchmclean5435]

The distinction survives in my NSW speech

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Interesting.

[@blue_rose789]

They also sound distinct to me and I'm in vic. One thing I do notice though is that most people I know pronounce Palm with a strut instead of 'a' here. It doesn't sound as distinct as it does in British english.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

@@blue_rose789 I think many SSB speakers have roughly the same quality in STRUT and PALM. You could write ʌ and ʌː

[@blue_rose789]

@@DrGeoffLindsey oh! That's exactly how I hear it! I do personally differentiate because I watch a lot of British channels on KZbin so I've been influenced a lot. But the drawn out strut makes sense.

[@gajonoob5122]

In my 8th grade, I used to have a South-african English teacher. Back then, I had very little knowledge of phonetics (although I started getting a growing interest in it by that time) so her accent to me really just sounded like Standard RP, but one thing that had always stuck out to me was how she pronounced words like shrimp more like shrump with a vowel similar to /ə/. This was by far her most noticeable feature to me and now I know why. Great video

[@therongjr]

I speak something close to General American, and I'm glad you mentioned the KIT vowel, because there have been many alleged schwa vowels in words where I heard what you called the KIT vowel, and it bothered me that no one else seemed to notice! 😆

[@cnidarianglow1041]

As an American (northwest US) I do pronounce the u in strut and the a in comma the same, but then I pronounce the middle u in cucumber differently than the middle u in industry. I pronounce the u in industry the same as the e in cucumber. I think I do genuinely have a strut/schwa distinction (thanks for the existential crisis I’ve been having about that for the last hour btw /lh), but they are often interchangeable in words like “but” and “because”.

[@Raveler1]

In visiting NZ, my American-Midwestern- accented family found it incredibly difficult to discern the difference between "thirteen" and "thirty" - all this time, I had thought it was about the pace of the speech, but in watching this video, I realize that it's because of the unexpected KIT vowel change. Thanks for clarifying a now 25-year-old mystery!

[@abc33155]

30 and 13 use the same vowels according to the dictionaries. No KIT vowel there.

[@Jo3M]

As a new Zealander I can tell you I always mix those two up

[@rossjennings4755]

I'm a bit confused by this -- as a Midwestern (western Wisconsin) speaker myself, I think the main difference between "thirteen" and "thirty", other than the final "n", is that "thirteen" has a full aspirated "t" in the middle: /θɚɾtʰin/, whereas "thirty" just has a flap: /θɚɾi/. And neither has /ə/ or /ɪ/ at all, only the "r-colored schwa" /ɚ/ (which I'm not all convinced isn't just a vocalic r).

[@dylanevans3237]

@@rossjennings4755 The reason why the NZ pronunciations might be hard to distinguish is that Southern Hemisphere dialects tend to use the flapped T in both "thirty" and "thirteen". So they lack the consonant difference that does much of the work separating these words in American English.

[@txikitofandango]

In places like Michigan, Wisconsin, western New York, where ʌ was part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, ʌ got pushed back almost to ... I forgot the symbol, but the "au" of "distraught." But the "a" in "above" and the "u" in "but" did not. So there's a distinction there, and it's been around a while, still present in the young (or yawng). You even hear it in their pronunciation of multiply as "mawltiply" but that's another story

[@Taricus]

I'm from Michigan and I find them to be very distinct. I don't use the "au" sound of "distraught" in young or multiply. I don't believe I've ever heard anyone say those words that way. If I have, I don't remember it. "distraught" sounds like "fought" and "caught", sometimes like "hot" (not always though)

[@chrisjohnston3512]

I knew a kind lady from somewhere in the American midwest whose accent had mostly assimilated to the local Western Canadian dialect except she consistently pronounced the "un-" prefix how I would expect the "on-" prefix to sound. Onbelievable!

[@quildtide4886]

Glad to see this comment; I'm from Metro Detroit and I noticed that the NCVS seems to have moved my ʌ but not schwa, but the rest of my family learned RP and lived in Britain for a bit before coming to the US, and I wasn't sure if this was just NCVS or a combination of NCVS + influence from RP that was causing them to be distinct for me. I've recently had a bit of an identity crisis after noticing that I tend to align more with RP on some things like yod-dropping patterns, and I was desperately checking if this was another case of me being influenced by RP or if were an actual NCVS phenomenon at play.

[@harrybrown4952]

Interesting enough, my native tongue Vietnamese has kind of two distinct vowels representing quite the same sounds to /əː/ and /ʌ/ which are ơ and â. So it's easy for us to tell the difference between the two sounds (tho we dont have any vowel that represents /ə/ but they're still very distinguishable)

[@tinfoilhomer909]

I am from Australia and the Vietnamese community in this country has a very distinct accent. We can understand them "straight off the boat" so to speak. It's very clear to the ear but always gives us a smile.

[@harrybrown4952]

@@tinfoilhomer909 those people are mostly descendants from many who escaped South Vietnam. The older Vietnamese generation tend to speak English with a hard Vietnamese accent. Whereas the young generation have more of a proper accent and sound more clearly when they speak

[@Keean_TTRealm]

Oh I’m excited to see your comment bc I asked my viet friends the same question. To me (Singaporean (Chinese) English speaker) they sound really similar. The difference seemed to be the amount of stressed or duration of the vowel ? For eg his name is “Sơn” and the first word in the word for airport “Sân”. And they look so confused why it sounded the same for me while they could differentiate it so easily 😅

[@harrybrown4952]

@@Keean_TTRealm Sân is pronounced more like 'sun' and Sơn is more like 'surn' (non-rhotic).

[@AndreiBerezin]

Tell you the truth, from a Slavic point of view, ALL sounds in Vietnamese are indistinguishable))

[@davydatwood3158]

So, as an urban Albertan, I have a similar accent to most other Canadian prairie cities, but it's distinct from the rural accents, except when I'm code-switching to talk to my rural family. It's also subtly distinct from the Vancouver area accent, the Ontarian urban accent, and the Ottawa area rural accents. (And of course, from the Maritime accents, but those are *very* distinct) (I've never met someone from other parts of rural Ontario so I don't know what they sound like.) And it is also distinct from General American. This makes me a little sad that your tour skipped Canada! But more relevantly, I've been trying to figure out how I say "foot," "strut," and "comma," and I'm currently inclining towards having all three vowels be distinct. Though "comma" I would say isn't a schwa, but rather a stressed "ah" sound, at the end. I think this is a legacy of my rural family, who are often described as "drawling." "foot" and "strut" do merge somewhat, though, if I'm being very informal. Since a lot of my friends also tend to flop between formal and informal language, even in informal settings, I'm now wondering if there's an element of RP sneaking in via university education?

[@clay3807]

Came here to say basically this. Strut, foot, and comma are all distinct vowels in my (diminished) Canadian prairie accent. "General American" definitely doesn't adequately describe most Canadian accents, especially in reference to vowel positions.

[@AlexCouch65]

I'm from North Idaho, and i dont know how many people here are starting to take on the same accent as you, but I've noticed a lot of people under 35 here, who grew up here, are starting to pronounce things similar to Albertans. We even go as far as rounding our ou diphthongs sometimes. So with house, instead of saying with a leading ASH vowel, we are now saying with a variation of ASH to Ah vowels, depending on the situation and their background. Same out, pout, couch, etc. I've noticed a lot of people in my area around Coeur D'Alene sometimes say Couch like "kah-ooch". I've only recently started saying it like that but not willingly. Or maybe i just noticed but I'm not sure. I'm not sure if this is an Albertan thing but i know it's generally a Canadian thing, mostly in Quebec or Ottawa right? Idk i think it's strange that we here suddenly started occasionally pronouncing our diphthongs similar to you guys. Same with our schwas. When you were describing "comma", I've noticed that we also say it like a weak ah at the end, but sometimes we say "kah-muh" with a schwa like when I'm with my family, who have a more general western American accent, i will pronounce it like the standard American, but when talking on the phone or with my friends, we often say it just how you described. We often merge the various schwas. But when talking to others outside of Idaho, we switch back to GenAm.

[@larrysulky7614]

As a GenAm speaker, I would like to note that if I heard someone say "S\ə\thern" out of context, I might well need to pause, parse, and ask them to repeat. "I'm sorry, did you you say 'Slitherin'?" "No, 'S\ə\thern'!" *pause, pause* "Oh! 'S\ʌ\thern'!"

[@stellapalavecino1814]

Thank you Geoff!! A video full of clear, fun and creative explanations, as usual :)

[@FairyCRat]

I love how making slight changes to just a few sounds can get you miles closer to a good accent impression. Like how unreducing the schwas immediately gives that Caribbean sound, introducing /ɪ/ as a replacement of unstressed schwa makes you sound Scottish, and introducing retroflex consonants gets you very close to Indian English, minus the trilled r.

[@troobninge6064]

As an American speaker, I definitely do have a distinct strut vowel [ɜ] and a distinct comma vowel [ə], very similar to the distribution of south east England, but i also have stressed comma in certain words, like "the", "a", and a minimal pair being "dumb" [d̪ɜm] vs "them" [d̪əm]

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thanks. How would you describe your accent (esp. where you grew up)?

[@troobninge6064]

@@DrGeoffLindsey Mostly NY AAVE (high thought vowel, sequences of [ɾəɾ] becoming [r] ) with minor influence from Bengali English (not having a full horse-hoarse merger, and certain words having a different pronunciation, like "vacuum" being /vækwəm/)

[@troobninge6064]

@@DrGeoffLindsey My keeping of strut and comma as distinct is probably from Bengali English, which is modeled on RP to my knowledge. In English loanwords in Bengali, strut is almost always equated to Bengali /a/, and comma, while also usually being /a/ , is much more variable

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

@@troobninge6064 I haven't studied Englishes of the subcontinent as much I would have liked. Could we say that STRUT and commA are both /a/, but the vowel is variable when unstressed/weak? So still one phoneme? (Of course I'm not directly addressing in my current videos the whole issue of the extent to which phonemics fully represents languages, which is interesting, important and deserves a video or videos of its own.)

[@troobninge6064]

@@DrGeoffLindsey I actually don't think that's the case because Bengali English is not nearly as stress timed. Unstressed strut is not as variable comma, and while comma is very variable, it's not as common on a phonological level as a lot of syllables are unreduced (for example "separate" and "thickness" might have a schwa in the last syllable in my accent, but in Bengali English it would be /sɛpəreɪt/ [sepäɹet] and /θɪknɛs/ [t̪ʰiknes])

[@greekreadings543]

I'm a native Australian. I took a linguistics class in high school and on the exam we needed to give a phonemic transcription of a bunch of words. One of them was "summer", which I transcribed "sʌmʌ". Apparently this was incorrect, and the correct answer was "sʌmə". and I kicked up a fuss about it at the time because I was so convinced that - at least in my speech - the two vowels in the word were the same.

[@WiggaMachiavelli]

I think this pattern exists especially among speaker of lower status. I have observed it among those with less education (whether because of economic factors or because of age) and certain ethnic minorities (Mediterraneans).

[@joonasvakkilainen2457]

A Californian phonetician told that in his dialects there is no actual schwa phoneme, but it is often represented by ɑ in a protonic position and by ɪ in post-tonic positions. He for example has ɑ in , but I've also heard that kind of vowel in Queen Elizabeth II's speech.

[@albertoalamamoran6082]

Take care, too Dr. Lindsey...God bless YOU...thanks indeed for your MASTER VIDEOS.

[@imagedezach]

As a native speaker of Texas English (before it largely merged with GenAm), I can say there is a strong difference between the two vowels in "above", mostly the raising of the onset of the stressed vowel (so that it is about 20% of the way between GenAm schwa and Russian ы) and occasional addition of a schwa final (so that it is a dipthong of sorts), which typically occurs in non-clipping situations (i.e. before lenis consonants). In other Southern dialects (that also are mostly disappearing now), you may hear a fronting of the stressed vowel, but to my ears it sounds like a similar shift also takes place for schwa in these dialects, so that I can't really tell a difference in quality.

[@NerlenDept]

Thank you for the video, Dr Lindsey; it is useful and entertaining, as always. I've been particularly glad to see the reference to 'Accents of English': this work helped me a lot when I was mastering SSB and trying to better understand its difference from other accents, especially so-called General American. As well as the blog of Mr Wells. Among other things, he mentioned you in his blog several times, and thanks to him I began reading your works. :) Also looking forward to the next video! It promises to be even more captivating.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thank you Ivan.

[@karenm2669]

I’m English, born in Cumbria to a strongly accented family, moved to Jamaica as a little kid, went to school with Jamaicans and ex-pat Brits, Canadians and a few Americans, then back to Cumbria, then to Welsh-speaking North Wales, then Dorset, then Cardiff, studied French and German to A-level, got a Bachelor’s in French and lived for a year in Cognac and finally moved to Western Canada in my 20s. In other words, I’ve spent my whole life updating my pronunciation of various words to stop people commenting, because oh my goodness it got tiresome after a while. 😅 This channel is endlessly fascinating to me. So glad I found it 👏👍

[@fuckdefed]

A fantastic analysis of comma vs strut! A good example of how there’s no distinction in South East Wales is how Cerys Matthews from Catatonia says the word ‘other’ in her duet, called Ballad of Tom Jones, with the band Space - ‘You stopped us from killing each OTHER, Tom Jones, Tom Jones.’ Even the reduction of a PUT vowel to a comma vowel sometimes occurs, as in the recent advert where a South East Walian says ‘Chromebuck’ for ‘Chromebook’ - of course the opposite phenomenon where the comma vowel is turned into a PUT vowel can be found in much of the Midlands, the North and North East Wales. Just heard a weird vowel said by Hank in Breaking Bad S2E1 around 24:40 mark ‘They’ve got buck (book) learning but no street skills’.

[@BPEREZRobertJamesL]

I am a non-native speaker of English from the Philippines. I distinguish between strut and schwa vowels (but sometimes I fail to observe this). I also use a lot of schwas (a feature I don't think is very common in the Philippines), although I occasionally slip and use /a/ instead of the schwa vowels for words that start with an unstressed , just like in the video.

[@tinfoilhomer909]

If you hear somebody from upstate Queensland in Australia they will make this slip up too haha! It's already part of a native dialect so worry not.

[@avaevathornton9851]

I'm from Gloucestershire in the southwest (though my parents were from the southeast) and I definitely have a crystal clear distinction between these vowels. The closest I can think of to a minimal pair are suspect (verb, with a schwa) and suspect (noun or adjective, with a strut vowel). But even without anything like minimal pairs, I certainly wouldn't consider them allophones.

[@catshez]

Dear Dr Geoff! You are a marvel and love your videos ! I live in Leicesterishire , and was thinking about one of your previous videos as I was walking around the city... Anyone from the South would say "Less- terr", yet as you know in Leicester people say "Lez-Tohh" Round here nothing is funny "funee", but "founeh" "bunny is not said "bunee" but "bouneh" Again,love your videos,my mum is French but also a qualified English teacher and experienced English speaker (married to my English Dad for 40 years hehe).. we love languages, we love everything you do...! Thank you !!😊

[@shmoobalizer]

great video again, very excited for the next!

[@LuisaAlfaro-sy6zo]

Beautiful

[@neilgoodman2885]

Professor you always brighten my day. Wait, did I say that ... thanks. ;-) PS, I still think it is amazing ANYONE learns this language we all seem to love so much!

[@SenAimeParis]

I am from Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Sinhalese has true mid vowels hence /ə/ is true mid. The English schwa /ə/ is more open from what I hear. According to my opinion, it seems to be even more open possibly reaching /ɐ/ when it is at the end of words. Because of this the Sinhalese accent pronounce the final schwa /ə/ as /a(ː)/ merging it with the STRUT vowel. The STRUT vowel /ʌ/ actually sounds like /ɐ/ to me. And according to Wells (1982) it is in fact /ɐ/ and to Sinhalese speakers it sounds like /a/. Therefore the STRUT vowel is also pronounced as /a/. STRUT /strʌt/ sounds more like /strɐt/ to me while Sinhalese speakers pronounce it as /strat/. COMMA /kɒmə/ sounds like /kɔmɐ/ to me and Sinhalese speakers pronounce it as /kəma(ː)/. But in other occasions the vowel becomes much closer. People is pronounced /piːpəl/ not /piːpal/ and about is pronounced /əˈbawt/ not /aˈbawt/. The LETTER vowel /lɛtə/ is pronounced /letəː/. People tend to lengthen it due the presence of r after the vowel even though it is /ə/ in RP. So, to round up STRUT /ʌ/ is pronounced as /a/. COMMA /ə/ pronounced as /a/ at the end of words. /ə/ is pronounced as /ə/ in other positions but closer than English. LETTER /ə/ is /əː/ due to the presence of r. I am not a phonetician. Just a random guy who loves linguistics. These are just my analysis of these vowels in the Sinhalese accent from what I hear.

[@KCSutherland]

I can confidently say that, as an American, there are very few phonemes I've struggled to distinguish quite as much as ə and ʌ. Even after studying phonetics and having a much better than average lexicon of them, I struggle to wilfully swap between these two vowels.

[@tiddlypom2097]

Loved this video! Did you make the follow up one? Wondering if I missed it or it's still in the works 😊

[@nvdawahyaify]

My "schwa" (unstressed vowel) is different depending on the word. In industry its an i, but in other words it's ə. I'm a native speaker of Californian English raised around Appalachian English speakers in my family.

[@futeramonfuturamet4830]

The biggest exception to this are most sub-varieties of southern American English, which pronounce the "u" sound much "higher".

[@johnleake5657]

I need to use my set of Wells a bit more often!

[@MM-jm6do]

This reminded me of learning Christmas carols in a choir as a child with a general American accent. We had to learn to pronounce “Criss-miss” as “Criss-muhss”

[@tridsonline]

👍🏻 Interesting, especially about the kit vowel in New Zealand .. I've noticed the tendency to do this in the Eastern coastal region of South Africa, Natal, where "fish 'n chips" often comes out as "fush n chups" (sorry, my keyboard doesn't have the upside down e). While "fish n chups for dunnu" is common elsewhere in S.Africa, Natal's "fush" is quite jarring, and i often find myself completely distracted by _how_ they speak, even losing the gist of _what_ they're saying! ☺️

[@therevelistmovement4683]

When I was a kid, interested by languages, I started paying attention to how I spoke. The letter O (and U) always puzzled me. I picked up Spanish in high school, and compared MY speech patterns with theirs. I noticed an incongruity. After a while, I thought that it was pronounced, "/ʌʊ/," but it still did not feel right. It was only after your seminal piece on English vowels that I finally knew the mechanics. However, I still hear myself interchanging between the schwa and /ʌ/, but becoming firmly stationed on the former.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thanks!

[@russellforrest1730]

Woh! Really appreciate how concise your video was, but will need to watch-pause-watch-pause-repeat. I suppose, that was the point. Anyway, thanks for another excellent video.

[@thysonsacclaim]

Love your videos.

[@LearnRunes]

Thank you very much for that overview. We may link to your video when discussing vowels (especially ᚪ and ᚫ) instead of trying to explain all this ourselves.

[@Arkylie]

Yay! My system as I'm working on it doesn't need to change to accommodate this -- I sussed it out on my own, correctly! I'm Pacific Northwest dialect, and have been marking [what / ton] the same as [Tina / the / Kevin (etc.)] ("the" making the schwa unless (a) deliberately stressed by the speaker or (b) followed by a vowel sound). Also, we totally have a light "ih" sound as a variation for the schwa, and I've been trying to suss out if it's phonotactically based or some relic from spelling alone (the way some people pronounce words a little differently if they know they're spelt with a given letter compared to another letter). Also, thank you so much for giving this rundown so I could actually hear how some of the other dialects are handling this. It's so phonologically isolating to communicate only in text (getting the meaning, but never sure what sounds the graphemes actually mean), yet so confusing to try to pick out the distinctions entirely from sound, so having that direct feedback of how the sounds shift and merge and which sounds they're related to was *so* helpful. Especially with hearing the Australian distinction, when I finally understood what you meant about how they could be distinctly distinguished (the cucumber/industry part), which isn't the case in mine.

[@Arkylie]

Also, I've noticed that in a few words, where I expect most people would use the schwa, I use the lax OO vowel (of 'foot')... but only in a few. "Today" sounds more right with Lax OO than with Uh. I expect it's allophonic and constrained by environment, but I've been debating how to represent it to my students, given that I mark Lax OO in a distinctive way.

[@christophergame7977]

As an Aussie, glad to learn I am probably not imagining a difference between the phonemes of bucket and budget, and of beloved and become.

[@turtlelazers476]

The way he said cucumber so perfectly scared me- lmao

[@shelookstome8727]

Loved this one. The fireworks when Australia came up made me laugh! Confirmed what I thought from your previous video about how I was sure we had two phonemes (Australia). But as you say, it's because our accent largely derives from London Cockney/SE English. It's incredible that the majority of the English-speaking world is the opposite. I wonder if this is something that adds to the distinctiveness of the Australian accent? 🤔

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thank you. I'd say the quite front [a ~ ɐ] of London-Oz-NZ is pretty distinctive. I'll discuss the consequences of this in my next video on this topic.

[@zak3744]

As a bit of a tangential personal anecdote there's definitely something distinctive about some Australian and some SE English accents. I grew up in East Anglia, in England, with pretty much one linguistic foot in Fenland and one in the "Estuarised RP" or whatever you want to call it of lower middle class SE England. And when I went to university at the age of 21, up North but with students from all round the country, something really strange happened. A staggering number of fellow students, all Northerners as far as I recall, asked me if I was Australian. They genuinely thought I was from Australia and were shocked to learn I wasn't! This wasn't something I'd ever encountered before, and I found it really surreal. So I don't know what the linguistic feature is, or if I personally exhibit it particularly strongly, but I presume there must be shared feature that people have coded in their brains as being typically Australian. I don't recall many other students getting the same question, so I always assumed it must be something in the East Anglian influence because it didn't seem that the many "posh RP" folk or people with various London accents were triggering the same thing in the listeners.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

@@zak3744 Interesting. Is there a recording of your voice, e.g. on KZbin? When I was a student in the US, people always thought I was Australian rather than British. It might have been partly due to some US-influenced t-voicing, but on balance back then I decided it was because didn't look or sound like Jeremy Irons.

[@zak3744]

​@@DrGeoffLindsey No nothing like that, sorry. I can't honestly think that there'd be any deliberate recordings of my voice as an adult, unless it's on someone's answer machine somewhere! I can confirm I also definitely wouldn't be mistaken for Jeremy Irons though. 😄

[@shelookstome8727]

@@zak3744 funny you say this Zak, but I remember going to Queensland many years ago for a holiday with my family (we are from South Australia) and we went to Sea World. My sister and I went on this same ride time and time over and the ride attendant asked if we were from England 🤣🤣 we were like what?! No we're from Adelaide.... Lol. They do say South Aussies sound the most 'English' out of the entire country. We not only have the trap/bath spilt but we say plaaant instead of plAnt (sorry don't have the IPA symbols lol but I think you get what I mean).

[@munkiesyeah]

So interesting again! Oddly, I’m from the Southeast of England and people used to ask me if I was from Australia all the time! Admittedly, I was a huge Neighbours fan and my gran was from South Africa. So I was perhaps a little mixed up accent wise! 😂

[@alexxela8956]

Hello sir Will you do that video about why the rest of England didn’t want an extra vowel? (so they can say cup rather than coop) Thank you!

[@tfh5575]

african american english speakers in the south, specifically atlanta, sometimes pronounce the strut vowel almost like “uh-eh” if that even makes sense. it’s barely noticeable. it’s a unique sound that i find kind of hard to imitate. i’m thinking of the way the the word “money” is pronounced by them.

[@larrytruelove8659]

It reminds me of an education reading class in college. I said that was and buzz were rhyming words. My instructor quickly told me they did not rhyme. The “a” in. “was” is supposed to be the “a” in father. The IPA shows the vowels in “buzz” and “was” to be the schwa. The IPA has a clearly different vowel.

[@EdwardLindon]

This is fascinating, but in addition to the linguistic analysis I wanted to hear all the various pronunciations.

[@andrewrobinson2565]

Although I have a South Durham accent, I now discover I've been teaching SSB for 18 years 😭 with schwa (weak) and inverted v (strong) to French people 🇨🇵🇪🇺.

[@andygeary3531]

Coming from stoke, this is a topic that is had almost on a daily basis in our house because half of the family pronounce these words differently to the other. My 8 yr old niece actually asked me why someone at school had a different pronunciation for the same word as both of us, which makes 3 different pronunciations for the same words. Book= Me- buck Her- book Her friend- beck I dont know the correct symbols but this is how i hear them. None of these sound like the RP pronunciation which i would spell "back" because i dont know the symbols. So that makes 4 different pronunciations for the same word, there might even be more that i cant think of right now. Accents are fun 😊

[@EdwinWalkerProfile]

As someone who grew up in the South East, after 9:19 I'm just repeating the word "southern" to myself and trying to tell what my own pronunciation is.

[@jorgeandresprietoprat9897]

Call me conventional, Prof. Lindsey, but I consider that your interesting videos about lambda and schwa develop a divergent approach: on the one hand it is phonetic/acoustic (may they have the same quality?) and on the other it is phonological/phonotactical (can schwa be stressed?). I agree that schwa covers a wide range of qualities, overlapping not only lambda but most other cardinal timbres. Geographical data only enrich this fact, which leads us to conclude that English vowels vary like sea waves. However, since we are dealing with abstract segments which have proved very useful in classrooms like mine, following rules like “schwa is never stressed”, regardless of its quality, makes all the sense in the world. I will keep watching and liking your in-depth productions, be sure of that.

[@morgantempleton2085]

As an Australian, I have never understood why people would spell a schwa with u, like "because" shortened to "cuz". It made absolutely no sense to me. I finally understand now, thank you. Although, my Mum told me that when she went to New Zealand, she met a woman who introduced herself as Lunda. Turned out her name was Linda. This never made sense to me, because obviously the New Zealand KIT vowel is famously schwa-like, I don't think it sounds anything like my STRUT vowel, which is MUCH more open. Maybe it's an age thing or a regional thing.

[@artugert]

This was fascinating! I'd love to see more videos like this, analyzing other aspects of accents around the world. Question: At 6:39, you said that in Singapore STRUT merged with PALM and commA with NURSE. Can someone explain what this means? Also, at the end you said there would be a next video in the series, but I am not able to find it.

[@driksarkar6675]

This means that Singaporeans typically pronounce the vowel in words like "str*u*t, c*u*t, b*u*t, etc." (the STRUT lexical set) identically to the one in words like "p*al*m, c*al*m, sp*a*, etc." (the PALM lexical set) and that they pronounce the vowel in "comm*a*, ind*u*stry, *a*bove, etc." the same way they pronounce the vowel in "nurse, worse, terse, etc." For more on lexical set names in English: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_set

[@artugert]

@@driksarkar6675 So they say "er-bove" instead of "above"?

[@driksarkar6675]

That depends on what dialect your respelling is based on. If you speak a rhotic North American dialect, I’d say they pronounce above like you do and pronounce “nurse” like “nuss”. If you speak SSB, they simply pronounce “nurse” shorter than you do. This is one reason why the International Phonetic Alphabet is used- what your respelling means depends on what dialect you speak. According to Wikipedia, in Singaporean English, the first vowel in “above” is pronounced [ə], and the vowel in “nurse” is also [ə].

[@artugert]

@@driksarkar6675 Oh right, this video is probably from the perspective of RP, not General American, so it would be ɜː, not ɜr. Also, I thought you meant COMMA was replaced with NURSE, rather than the other way around. Got it, thanks.

[@Paul71H]

Very interesting. In the north England accent, I can easily hear the difference between the u in STRUT and the a (schwa) in COMMA, but that seems to be because that accent uses the same vowel sound as in FOOT in the word STRUT. In the other accents where STRUT is distinct from COMMA, I can hear very little if any difference between the STRUT vowel and the schwa in COMMA. Maybe this is because I'm American, and as you pointed out in your previous video, we Americans pronounce these two vowel sounds identically. Maybe since I pronounce them the same, I'm not attuned to hearing the difference, even when people pronounce them distinctly?

[@angeldude101]

I personally think there's value in trying to transcribe English words in a dialect-agnostic manner, so since there are regions where ə and ʌ are distinguished, in addition to ə also having some other unique behavior depending on the situation, I would say that they deserve their own symbols. I was actually wondering if there's been any attempt at "diaphonetic transcription" of English words, where "diaphonemes" appear to be abstract parts of speech that map to different phonemes depending on the dialect.

[@RobBCactive]

Jst wrtng cnsnnts mght hlp. Mny hmphns mn wrttn spllng hs sfl ltrnts. Wn't b pplr

[@profeseurchemical]

im from northeast wales, and my foot and strut words both use the same vowel. i think it's a schwa, but i can say comma with either as 'e(r)' or as 'ah' with the trap vowel. unclear if the 'e(r)' variety is distinct from the 'uh' sound i make or not. i think there is a subtle difference there? but then, i used to thing i said the r at the ends of words when really i was vowel lengthening the whole time so idk.

[@harsimaja9517]

Canada in a shambles... esp. if they realise that this video has (not without reason) subsumed Canadian English under General American here, as in this case the same applies to 'general' Canadian English, which essentially forms part of the same continuum and derives from it. It has its own vowel features like Canadian raising but that doesn't apply here

[@GoodNewsEveryone2999]

I still say I have a difference in phonemes and that my strut and comma phonemes are inverted from the ones in RP. I have a lot of others too..., EVERY vowel in "comfortable" is pronounced as different phonemes in my accent; I'm originally from Atlanta, Ga, USA, I went to an international elementary aka primary school, and my grandmother, who babysat me frequently, spoke in a combination of what we call an antebellum accent, a very slight country northern GA accent for certain words/phrases (there are hundreds of local variations on a Southern and/or GA accent in the US, so if you aren't familiar with them all this likely means nothing to you), and the transatlantic accent (she was well educated and grew up in a time that meant she learned the transatlantic pronunciation of some words as the "proper" one). There's no one regional accent in the US. As a Southerner, we can often pinpoint the exact town someone is from, and certainly the state and whether or not someone is from a city or rural area, all based on the accent and dialect differences (yes, in some regions there is a full-on dialect difference as opposed to just a different accent). The US has an uncountable number of accents and dialects. Literally, uncountable.

[@darthvader3910]

Hey Dr Lindsey are you able to go the extra mile and make a video on exposing all written letter combinations that represent the schwa vowel in english??

[@UTubeQu1che551]

I love your videos. I grew up in the SF Bay Area. My mom, a single parent was a first generation English speaker-she spoke Polish thru high school in Dorchester, Ma yet no one would ever say I have any sort of accent. Only “American” How is this explained?

[@Vee_of_the_Weald]

Despite having a few remnant of my years at Uni in Paris, I got lost very quickly 😢. Is it because I’m not a native English speaker and you were going a bit fast for me to have time to register the info? Is it because it could have done with a few more examples? Or is (the most probable cause) because the last time I opened a book on phonetics was 30 years ago (30!! - where had the time gone?) Thank you, nonetheless, for another fascinating video.

[@square_wheel]

03:00 I'm hearing a slight difference in the way you pronounce them, at least in this utterance. "untidy" has a bit of secondary stress on the "un". So one is "a large UN-TYE-dy room", the ofher is "a large un-TYE-dy room"

[@gnome8979]

love the video, as an american, Ive always noticed that the way that the ipa transcribes the sound in 'that' and in the word 'can' is nearly always the same - which for me makes no sense. Even when there is a difference marked it's always proposed that it's nasalized, which is definitely untrue for me at least (if im not mistaken, a nasal æ would be something similar to a nasal a in french, which it most definitely is not in my dialect). I just thought it would be an interesting topic for a video possibly

[@FionaEm]

I'm an Aussie, and I say the 'u' in strut & 'a' in comma pretty much the same. The latter is a bit shorter, but the fundamental sound is the same. The difference between certain Aussie & NZ vowels (e.g. in six and sex) is the source of much mirth 😅

[@WiggaMachiavelli]

I think this pattern exists especially among speaker of lower status. I have observed it among those with less education (whether because of economic factors or because of age) and certain ethnic minorities (Mediterraneans).

[@ZoDoneRightNow]

As a Western Australian, my strut is closer to /ɐ/ and there is a noticeable difference between my strut and schwa. What confuses me a bit though is the vowel in “commA” which is closer to my strut than my schwa in my accent. I can pronounce it with a schwa but it makes me sound closer to a cultivated eastern australian accent.

[@brianross9753]

I'm American and I definitely hear a clear difference between the "u" in "strut" and "cup" on one hand and the "u" in "industry". If I take the "u" in industry and place that vowel quality in the word "cup", it doesn't sound right. "Above" does indeed the same vowel quality twice, but I think that's more of taking what is schwa in RP in the first vowel and making it the strut value, similar to "undone". So I treat "above" similar to the way I treat "undone".

[@polenfrej4364]

I’ve just seen today’s video of Dogen where he pronounces _tómorrow_ instead of _tomórrow_ kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5DdcqGmoM1la6s as an example of how Japanese without a proper pitch accent sounds to natives, and he does pronounce it as /ˈtəmɑroʊ/ instead of /ˈtʌmɑroʊ/. It reminds me of when _the_ is pronounced with a stress but in its weak form, i.e. /ˈðə/ in place of /ˈði/. Coincidentally, yesterday I was reading about J. C. Wells and taking a look at his old blog, he really has a great background. What a nice fella.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Since strong and weak syllables have a different stress level (as John Wells concedes), RP-type speakers strictly have no minimal pairs for STRUT and commA in normal pronunciation, and have to use marked stressing of normally-weak syllables to get minimal pairs. This is why some linguists don't consider STRUT and commA as contrastive even in RP!

[@naufalzaid7500]

0:12 I know that this probably seems a bit stupid to ask, but could you list any other examples of vowel phonemes having a difference in quality when they're stressed vs when they're unstressed? (asking out of curiosty)

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

No, it's a great question. Acoustic studies suggest that the vowel space is reduced in unstressed syllables, reflecting a general centralizing effect. The reduction of diphthongs in unstressed syllables may involve quality effects, e.g. FACE [ɛi] > [e]. GOAT has been described as varying a lot depending on stress in various accents, with the 'o' of November occurring as something between its full form and schwa, e.g. [ɵ]. And of course there are many stress effects on consonants.

[@naufalzaid7500]

@@DrGeoffLindsey Thank you so much for your answer! I never knew the diphthongs too could be reduced (and to that extent too!). I'd only ever heard of smoothing when it came to vowel alterations involving diphthongs.

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

I'm from east new England. While my foot and schwa are not merged, in the word able and pull I have the same phone. Making able and a bull almost identical My strut and comma contrast because my strut is closer to /ɐ/ than the general American strut. But growing up hearing and code switching both it can be difficult for me to identify the sounds, since I produce a different accent in casual speech and slow speech

[@DanGiaimo]

So, I'm an American, (raised in MA and living there now, but spent a significant amount of time in CA) and if I say the phrase "the word 'the'", then I hear a slight but distinct difference in the vowel in the first "the" and the vowel in the second "the". And, no, neither pronunciation rhymes with "thee".

[@NoNumbersAfterName]

I'm American (with an accent close to General American) and I find STRUT and commA to be different vowels. And yes, schwa can be stressed or unstressed, and STRUT can be stressed or unstressed. The problem is that STRUT, like most other vowels, can be reduced to schwa in the unstressed position. But that's not because unstressed STRUT is schwa; most other vowels get the same treatment.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

What's an example of your contrast between stressed schwa and stressed STRUT? I can't speak for your individual accent but all my life Americans have been asking me what the difference is between schwa and wedge, which southern Brits and Australians never ask. As for 'most vowels become schwa in unstressed syllables', I don't know what this means unless you believe in some extremely abstract analysis where banana is underlyingly bænænæ, and syllables with full vowels have stress by definition.

[@NoNumbersAfterName]

@@DrGeoffLindsey As for "most vowels become schwa in unstressed syllables, a good example is "so," which when spoken with emphasis clearly uses an o, but a schwa when it's glossed over in a sentence. The same can be done with "a" or "I" or any other vowel. I'm not saying that most unstressed vowels are turned into schwa unless I'm mumbling, but that most vowels have situations in which they're reduced to schwa, and STRUT is no different. As for a stressed schwa, consider "the." Although it is often unstressed with a schwa, and often stressed with an /i/, it can also be spoken as stressed with a schwa, and not as stressed with a STRUT (for me). If I consciously say "but the" by itself, the u and the e have different sounds.

[@stiofanmacamhalghaidhau765]

given that you can locate someone in dublin to within a mile or so of where they grew up based on their accent, and regional accents across ireland are so varied for a range of reasons, 'Ireland... mostly' probably requires a considerable amount of deep-digging, which is a convoluted way to pitch for a discussion about the multitude of irish accents in english. gwan ye know ye wanta

[@bobsayshi7073]

As a South African I can confirm that “this thing” involves two completely different vowel sounds here (“thuhs thing”). No idea how that managed to happen.

[@mac5565]

Do you have the same vowel sound in "thing" and "bed"?

[@bobsayshi7073]

@@mac5565 No, the neutral South African accent pronounces them both the normal British way. However, some of the very thick Afrikaans accents in Cape Town pronounce them like “theeng” and “bid”. But never merges them.

[@himssendol6512]

I learn somewhere that if it’s spelled with a U, it is [ʌ] If it’s spelled with some other vowel, it is a [ə] 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ My english is Chicago AE + Hong Kong style BE.

[@mathiaslist6705]

2:39 musst is a spelling update to common German pronunciation ... as for Austrobavarian or what's supposed to be the native language of East Austria the "u" is actually a diphtong from being "muist" where I grew up to "muast" in larger parts of the country ... actually it was spelled "mußt" before 1997 which somehow indicates that it was a long vowel

[@aepfeln]

Well, a word spelled “mußt” in the after-1997 system would have a long vowel, but before, one would only have used “ss” between vowels (and of course only when the preceding vowel was short), and “ß” anywhere else. The feeling was that the two letters “ßt” were enough to show the shortness of the “u” in mußt. After all, the spelling of “müssen” didn’t change.

[@danielrhouck]

Did you ever make the follow-up video you promised? I can’t find it

[@rhondamontgomery3797]

I noticed that you used the "ə" in place of "ou" in the word Southern (I like phonetic spellings). How come you didn't do the same for the other types of English 🤔?

[@ChavvyCommunist]

Mr Lindsey, can I please know where exactly Northern England 2 is found? I've never heard any Northerners with a foot-strut distinction who hadn't specifically lived outside the North or hadn't clearly picked it up from the media they consume. It's hard for me to imagine someone sounding like you natively, especially someone from Liverpool. Even middle class people typically have the /ʊ/ where I live.

[@ExploreBC79]

Nice Video.Thanks

[@mildlycornfield]

Unless I'm speaking very clearly, I can confirm that 'a large and tidy room' sounds exactly like 'a large untidy room' in my South Walian accent

[@clerigocarriedo]

I have the impression that most or many MLE speakers use the same sound for RP /ʌ/ and (word-final?) /ə/. Something similar to /ɑ/ or even /ɒ/. Does this make sense to you? So, "Mother"=/ˈmɑvɑ/. What do you think?

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

I think you're right. Various accents with a STRUT-commA contrast have a word- or phrase-final vowel that is identifiable with STRUT rather than commA (which makes "commA" a less than ideal keyword). Daniel Jones's Outline of English Phonetics, 1st ed. (1918): "Many English people actually use ʌ for ə when final, pronouncing bitter, butter, clever as 'bitʌ. 'bʌtʌ, 'klevʌ. There is no objection to this pronunciation." (fn 1, p. 95) A young SSB speaker commented on my last video that he merges FOOT and schwa (as I mention at the end of the present video), except that he uses STRUT phrase-finally. And I think a back STRUT vowel is widespread. I never quite understand why so many sources insist that modern STRUT is cental [ɐ]. That sounds London-Essex-Estuary to me.

[@baerlauchstal]

I was just thinking this. Something similar can also occur in certain, though not all, more traditional working-class lects in and around London, I reckon; but as you say, only in word-final position. All of which kind of illustrates the extent to which the RP speakers who laid down the conventions of traditional phonetic transcription ignored, ‘othered’, or perhaps even failed to notice, other varieties of English. (Bit of politics, ladies and gentlemen.)

[@samg7697]

This explains why my southern wife thinks "books" and "bucks" are pronounced differently.

[@fromchomleystreet]

I don’t understand why NZ is in the “no” column. They have a stressable schwa, but they also have a weak schwa and a strong turned v.

[@CP-rg5mi]

I was quite taken aback to hear the SA pronunciation of dinner being interpreted as two identical vowels (schwa). To my ears the SA "i" in strong syllables is very much different from schwa and closer to Turkish "ı" or Romanian "î", though certainly more closed than these. Then again, I'm not a linguist...

[@erkinalp]

> Turkish "ı" or Romanian "î" Those are near-close.

[@christopherellis2663]

Back close unrounded, same as in kiwi six. 🇷🇴 â/î, Iı, also in Japanese, Korean _

[@MatrixTheKitty]

I've always been so confused by the apparent contrast between /ə/ and /ʌ/ in transcriptions of English - learning from your channel that it was an artifact of incorrectly applying an aspect of RP to other dialects has been eye-opening! I am, however, still confused by the choice of /ə/ to transcribe the STRUT/commA vowel in North American dialects. I'm from Canada, and I've personally always heard that vowel in NA dialects as [ʌ], like Wells gives for Scottish dialects. Indeed, when you say [ə] and [ʌ] in quick succession when showing examples from RP, I can tell the difference between the two sounds, and am confident that [ə] appears nowhere in my speech... except possibly as my realization of the FOOT vowel?? It feels less rounded than I'd expect of [ʊ]... sometimes? Honestly, playing with my FOOT vowel a bit, I might actually have free variation between [ə] and [ʊ]. Sometimes I feel my lips rounding on that vowel, and sometimes I don't.

[@davydatwood3158]

What part of Canada? I'm in Alberta, and I find the whole "oot and aboot" thing super annoying because that's not how Prairie accents sound. I say "fut" and "abowwt." We have lots of schwas, and lots of drawn out "ah" or "ow" sounds. But then I met folks from the Ottawa region and discovered they actually do sound like that!

[@MatrixTheKitty]

@@davydatwood3158 I'm from BC - I was born in Quebec, but we moved here when i was very young.

[@evanrice6417]

I came here to say the same thing! I'm American, and my experience is EXACTLY the same as what you described.

[@LunizIsGlacey]

I'm Aussie, but as opposed to what was said about Australian accents in the video, I find that usually I and others around me seem to pronounce what would be word-final schwa in other accents (in words like "commA") using our strut vowel... Any other Aussies out there who hear/do this too, or am I just hallucinating?? 🤣

[@WiggaMachiavelli]

I think this pattern exists especially among speaker of lower status. I have observed it among those with less education (whether because of economic factors or because of age) and certain ethnic minorities (Mediterraneans).

[@rosiefay7283]

1:22 For there to be phonemic opposition, the sounds must either be both in stressed syllables or both in unstressed ones. A stressed syllable's vowel and an unstressed syllable's vowel can't be in phonemic opposition, because the stress patterns are different. English doesn't have many possibilities for an unstressed syllable's vowel: schwa as in commA; so-called schwi as in happY; and, in rhotic accents, lettER. STRUT occurs only in stressed syllables. By contrast, stressed commA is pretty marginal in English. You show that there are accents in which the two vowels of "above" are realised with the same sound. However, I don't see that that implies that they are instances of the same phoneme. In some southern accents, the vowels sounds of "needy" are identical in quality, differing only in length and stress. In some northern ones, this is true of the vowels sounds of "city". But happY is a separate phoneme from FLEECE and KIT, isn't it?

[@tinfoilhomer909]

the vowel in happY is a great example to prove your cause. Tasmanian "happY" is phonetically the same vowel in "sin", New South Wales "happY" is phonetically the same vowel in "seen". General Australian English is called the largest homogenous phonetic accent in the world by land area so I think it's worth to note any variation.

[@keithadamson8256]

If STRUT occurs only in stressed syllables, do you hear a difference between "doughnut" and Robert Donat (the actor)?

[@edwin5419]

There's such variation in the Australian accent that one cannot speak of it as a single accent. Some have tried to categorise it as three (high, middle & broad), but the trained ear can clearly tell where someone is from. Heck I can even tell if someone is from the Western suburbs of Perth versus East versus country WA. Once you start paying attention, it's very obvious. I have a Perth Western Suburbs accent. My Armadale family have asked if I'm English or American, that's how distinct it is from theirs. But only because theirs is like crocodile dundee broad.

[@dextrodemon]

I feel like people from perth get an ear for this for some reason. i've moved to the eastern states recently and people don't seem to make the distinction the same way, aside from thinking i sound english of course.

[@edwin5419]

@@dextrodemon interesting! I wonder if it's because ours is so mild that we can hear the variations in the others.

[@WiggaMachiavelli]

I suspect something similar is at play for South Australians. Perhaps the 'I'm not English, just from Adelaide' phenomenon is not a product of Anglophilia and deluded vanity, but of the eastern ear being less-attuned to regional (and perhaps social) difference. I wonder if the distinctions are a result of greater geographical isolation, and survive notwithstanding the march of technology and the inescapable (and often jarring) cacophony of eastern voices in national media.

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

I think there are a bunch of other England accents you don't mention, mostly of the Midlands. West and East Midlands - both different from Northern except in the northern parts of the counties - and East Anglia. I wonder what more recent dialect surveys say on this.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Yes, many accents aren't covered. To make it manageable, I restricted myself to those for which John Wells discusses /ʌ/ and /ə/. I may still have missed something.

[@evanrice6417]

When I hear you say the two side by side, I hear your "strut" as what I'd always thought schwa was, and your "schwa" as identical to the double-o in the word "look," just unaccented. I say the words strut and comma both with what your "strut" sounds like, as well as the second u in cucumber, but pronounce the u in industry with the same vowel sound that gets appended to the letter D when attempting to pronounce the letter D's sound without a vowel.

[@evanrice6417]

Oh, and I'm American, I forgot to mention.

[@maloholden7645]

Is there a minimal pair for schwa and turned v in any English dialect? If not why do we refer to them as phonemes and not allophones, even in dialects where they are phonetically distinct? Thanks.

[@notwithouttext]

none which are structurally the same. if you count those, then there's "a large untidy room" and "a large and tidy room", as well as "up-end" and "append".

[@harryvincent2434]

I went to school in Coventry, my mum's from Nuneaton and dad from York,and I go to uni in York. I don't get this at all lol. When I say comma it didn't even sound like a UH sound. There's too many uh being said lol I don't even know which uh is what uh now

[@Melthornal]

im american, and i feel like i have two different vowels. like cup and brother sound nothing alike. but strut and comma i think are the same vowel. so there are two vowels, they are in different areas i think.

[@Melthornal]

also, large untidy and large and tidy are homophones to me unless i want to stress the un intentionally.

[@timewave02012]

What about the Canadian accent? I don't think they pronounce "above" like Americans.

[@juliansmith4295]

Brits are unaware of Canada's existence.

[@frafraplanner9277]

I really want to know how the STRUT vowel ended up merging with the COMMA vowel in every dialect except Australian and Southeastern English!

[@ruslyoliveira2177]

Hi Geoff. Would you say that /ʌ/ is a short /ɑː/, and /ɜː/ is a long /ə/?

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Yes, I think that approach will give you a good SSB accent. Most of the familiar books say that /ʌ/ is now central, like 'international a', but I think that kind of pronunciation is Estuary rather than SSB. (Nothing wrong with Estuary, but it isn't considered the 'standard', not yet anyway.) In STRUT words I hear a short PALM vowel from many younger SSB speakers, or at least very similar to PALM. PALM however is raised when compared with classic RP. Phoneticallly it's probably more like [ʌː]. Real [ɑː] sounds old-fashioned. Probably we should give /ʌː/ as an option on CUBE. I think the symbol ɜ was basically a cheat, a way of showing ə in a stressed syllable without admitting schwa could be stressed. If you examine the use of ɜ for various languages by various scholars over the years, it's pretty confusing. However the 'agreement' that ɜ means a more open quality, as shown on the modern IPA chart, is quite recent. By the way, Daniel Jones's Outline of English Phonetics says that RP NURSE is *closer* than commA, not more open! Anyway, Jones used /əː/ for NURSE. I hope you're well. Thanks for the likes on Instagram :)

[@ruslyoliveira2177]

@@DrGeoffLindsey thank you Geoff. Great explanation!

[@jikiajikia]

@@DrGeoffLindsey isn't /ʌ/ more like [ɐ]? rather than [ä] or [ɑ]?

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

@@jikiajikia As I said to Rusly, the usual story is that /ʌ/ is like [ɐ], which is one of the reasons so many non-natives pronounce STRUT words with their 'a'. That pronunciation is used in London/Estuary, but the SSB pronunciation is often more back. My next video looks at this.

[@xolang]

Sorry I don't know how to type the correct IPA symbols, but I'd say that in Australia, the /3:/ in nurse is different from /ǝ/ in comma. /3:/ sounds almost like German ö to my ears, whereas /ǝ/ is, well, /ǝ/. This sound is (IMO) so distinct that I even noticed it as a kid, before I had any idea about phonetics.

[@7MPhonemicEnglish]

I'm confused. What is "commA". I thought we were investigating Schwa vs Strut & where do we find these symbol names?

[@ClausB252]

Please explain how the word so sounds like soy or say in some accents.

[@fimbles4211]

As a current slt student and northerner- I got very confused at first by strut, foot and schwa. Still am if I'll be honest.