Mid central vowel

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The mid central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. A reduced mid central vowel is known as a schwa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents either sound is ⟨ə⟩, a rotated lowercase letter e. The word schwa comes from the Hebrew shva (via German), a niqqud, which in most cases in Modern Hebrew denotes a de-emphasis of an accompanying vowel that would otherwise be pronounced strongly. Shva itself is silent and is not a mid central vowel, which does not exist in Modern Hebrew. While the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association does not define the roundedness of [ə], a schwa is more often unrounded than rounded. The phonetician Jane Setter describes the pronunciation of the unrounded variant as follows: "a sound which can be produced by basically relaxing the articulators in the oral cavity and vocalising." To produce the rounded variant, all that needs to be done in addition to that is to round the lips. Afrikaans contrasts unrounded...

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