Many schwas

[Grant Barrett]

On Feb 16, 2009, at 13:29, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
> What amazes me is that folks call these two n's different phonemes
> and yet they think schwa is one phoneme when it is in reality many.

I hesitate to encourage you, Tom, given your oft-ridden pronunciation,
hobby horses, but I feel compelled to say that, having spent some time
recently with the Century Dictionary, I find that the pronunciation
editors there also believed that there were many schwa sounds.

The Century Dictionary (first published in 1889, last revised in 1911,
and last published in 1914) pronunciations are given using a system of
the editor's own devising. The key contains the following types of
schwa sounds:

a with a macron above and a dot below: prelate, captain, courage, adage

e with a macron above and a dot below: episcopal, abnegate, aggregate

o with a macron above and a dot below: abrogate, eulogy, democrat

u with a macron above and a dot below: singular, education.
accumulate, accentuate

a with two dots below: aback, abandon, errant, republican

e with two dots below: absent, abstinent, absorbent, prudent, difference

i with two dots below: charity, density

o with two dots below: abandon, ablution, valor, actor, idiot

a with dieresis and  two dots below: Persia, peninsula

e with macron and two dots below: ("as in _the_ [/thuh/] book") jack-
in-the-box, nevertheless, stick-in-the-mud

u with macron and two dots below: acupressure, adventure, nature,
feature

Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org

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