491. The French are apt to add lip-rounding to this sound. It should not have any trace of lip-rounding.
492. Germans and Scandinavians generally advance the tongue and raise it too high when there is no r in the spelling. The result is that in their pronunciation the word about ə´baut sounds rather like e´baut, advancement əd´vɑːnsmənt sounds too much like ed´vɑːnsmənt.
493. On the other hand when the vowel letter is followed by r in the spelling (as in bitter ´bitə, harbour ´hɑːbə), Germans usually make the sound rather like the English ɔ (to which a consonantal r-sound of some kind is generally added). It should be noted that the English word bitter has much more similarity to the German bitte than it has to the German bitter. Note also that the average English ə is very similar in sound to ʌ (§ 443). The pronunciations ´bitʌ, ʌ´baut are not very far removed from the correct forms ´bitə, ə´baut.[1]
494. It may also be found helpful to remember this resemblance of ə to ʌ in acquiring the pronunciation of the diphthongs iə, ɛə, uə. The words pier piə, pair pɛə, poor puə, sound very like piʌ, pɛʌ, puʌ. Foreigners can often improve their pronunciation of ɛə by taking care that the mouth is more widely open for the ə than for the ɛ.
495. The “neutral” vowel ə only occurs in unstressed position. The strong vowels of stressed syllables are very commonly reduced to this weak vowel ə when the syllables become quite unstressed: thus the word a by itself is pronounced ei, but a book is pronounced ə´buk; at by itself is pronounced æt, but at once, at all are pronounced ət´wʌns, ə´tɔːl; the by itself is pronounced ðiː, but the book is ðə´buk; to by itself is pronounced tuː, but to-day, together are tə´dei, tə´geðə[2]. Two and two are four is not pronounced ´tuːænd´tuːɑː´fɔː (which is the sort of form most foreigners seem to aim at) but is pronounced ´tuːən´tuːə´fɔː or ´tuən´tuə´fɔː. Away from the city is pronounced ə´weifrəmðə´siti, I should have thought so is pronounced aiʃədəv´θɔːtsou.
496. Many words of one syllable have thus two forms in pronunciation, a strong form used when the word is stressed, and a weak form containing the vowel ə used only when the word is unstressed.
497. The following is a list of the principal words which have two such forms.[3] Weak forms marked * are frequent though not universal; their use is not essential for a correct pronunciation.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Less commonly tu´dei, tu´geðə.
- ↑ Note that the words not nɔt, on ɔn, then ðen, when hwen do not figure
surrounding sounds. Thus the first ə in together tə´geðə often becomes practically an unrounded u (phonetic symbol ɯ) owing to the influence of the following ɡ.
