The UH-Sound (Part 2)
Here’s a twist. We’re talking about the UH-sound again.
The schwa sound [ə] occurs in the unstressed syllable of a multi-syllable word or a reduced vowel sound in a function word.
Today, we’re talking about the [ʌ] sound, which can appear as the stressed syllable or primary stress.
This open-mid back unrounded vowel or low-mid back unrounded vowel is called a caret.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for this sound is /ʌ/. Its sound symbol is an upside down ‘v’. Other names for the caret are ‘hat’ and ‘wedge’.
In General American English and Canadian English, the [ʌ] sound is the sound in the word ‘GUT’ or ‘BUT’.
In English, schwa is the most common vowel sound. So it is important to recognize, identify and recreate.
SYMBOL
On the IPA vowel chart, it is located on the middle of the chart.
The Color Vowel® Chart, created by Karen Taylor and Shirley Thompson in 1999, is another visual organizer for spoken English and represents how to learn and think about vowels. It refers to this sound as the ‘CUP OF MUSTARD’ sound or the MUSTARD vowel. Notice the consistent placement on the mid-back corner of each respective chart.
The Color Vowel® Chart, 5th Edition © 2019. ColorVowel.com. Used with Creative Commons licensing (CC BY-NC-ND).
SOUND
Now, don’t go down the rabbit hole of comparing the [ə] and the [ʌ]. I would argue that acoustically, they are extremely similar but there are key distinctions between WHERE they appear in a sound and how.
Whereas the [ə] appears in an unstressed syllable of a multi-syllable words or as a reduced vowel sound in a function word, the [ʌ] can appear in the primary stress.
One of the key features of the primary stressed syllable of a word is how English speakers identify a stressed syllable. It is longer, louder and/or higher pitch. The unstressed syllable is shorter, flatter in pitch variation, said more quietly.
Consider the three levels of syllable stress possible:
stressed /⬤/
secondarily stressed /●/
unstressed /•/
Every multi-syllable word has a single stressed syllable. The single stressed syllable of the word has the most emphasis. The remainder of the syllables may have a secondary stress or may be unstressed.
The word another is a great example between [ə] and [ʌ]. The second syllable is stressed. Notice the difference in pitch, length, and loudness of each respective syllable. The second syllable is much longer, signifying its role as the primary stressed syllable. The first and third syllable have the schwa sound [ə] and are much quicker, lower volume and lower pitch.
a • no • ther
/• ⬤ •/
The jaw drops a bit for this sound, but the shape of the tongue doesn’t change compared to the mouth at rest. It’s totally relaxed, just like for the [ə] with the tongue tip forward in resting position.
FEATURES
The [ʌ] sound features are as follows.
Its vowel height is open-mid, also known as low-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel (a low vowel) and a mid vowel.
Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.
It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION
In English, the caret sound is reflected in spelling in many different ways. Depending on the specific English dialect, it may be written using any of the following letters:
oe - (less common) does
a - what
o - love, month, onion, colour, ton, government
oo - blood, flood,
ou - trouble, rough, country
u - up, dumb, cup, luck, submarine, sung, bus, such, hut, fuzz,
The reason why I’m especially showing you the different spelling combinations that can create this sound is that there will ALWAYS be exceptions, weird spellings, or other things that impact how reliable the written representation will be. Even now, the sound is typically represented by a U-letter, O-letter or O or U combination. However, what and does are also examples of the sound.
LISTENING
You need to be able to identify the sound; rhyming is an excellent way to match it properly. So, if you are not good already, start practicing rhyming and hearing the sound.
| EE | IH | AY | EH | AA | UH |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bean |
bin | bane | Ben |
ban |
bun |
| reed | rid | raid | red | rad | rud |
| teak | tick | take | tech |
tack | tuck |
I’m breaking down every single sound down for you so that you can learn how to produce each sound in English accurately. Sometimes, we’ll have easier sounds and sometimes we’ll have harder sounds.
If you’ve grasped this sound, then great! But if you’ve got a tip that might work for others, or you took a while to produce this sound correct but something clicked for you, let me know down below in the comments. My goal is to have a community know what to do when they’re stuck!
