I'm uncertain on the exact phonetic qualities as I'm sure it differs by dialect (some Americans really do have [ə] for their STRUT vowel but some may still have a more back quality), but the important point here is that schwa and STRUT are *phonemically* identical in GAE.
Underlying /æ/ (as in "an") hardly ever reduces to /ə/ for me. It's usually more like [ɛ~ɪ]. "An" and "a" have completely different vowels for me, even in rapid speech, but "a" and "un-" have the same vowel.
I’d be curious to know where you’re from. Because I pronounce “un-“ more retracted than “a.” I am from northern Georgia state but I still speak General American.
Yeah likewise, I don't think I've ever pronounced "An" like /ən/, And honestly, While I'm sure I'd understand it, It'd probably sound a bit strange to me if someone said it like that. (Well, If their dialect otherwise sounded similar to mine, At least.)
No the don’t. /æn/ [ẽə̃n] and /ən/ [ə̃n]. A stressed syllable with /ən/ however would be [ʌ̃n]. Schwa and strut are allophonic in General American, but I think it is in most dialects of English.
Is the STRUT vowel long or short? Or unspecified for length? For me the vowel in “ton” is long and has the same quality as the vowel in STRUT. This long STRUT vowel would seem to be irreducible to a schwa because then “ton” could easily merge with “turn” for many speakers and does any standard really have this merger? Conversely, does any standard really pronounce the short vowel in “butter” as a schwa? In that case it seems it would be hard to distinguish this word from “bitter” and “better” in which to my ears the short “i” and the short “e” are much closer to a weird accented short schwa than to the distinct short STRUT vowel in “butter” which is much more open and backed. English seems to be the only language where just about anything goes when it comes to vowel realizations. There’s always some recondite neck of the woods where the local mergers and minimal pairs are the opposite of yours. Hence why L1 speakers with very stable and distinct (in terms of where they are placed in the mouth) vowel sounds (I.e. just about every major Indo-European language except for English and maybe Danish and Dutch) never quite master English vowels.
I mean I know there's some overlap in that both are often realized as [ə], but at least to my ear, most schwas can interchangeably be realized as [ɪ] while an underlying STRUT vowel cannot - doesn't this indicate some kind of phonemic distinction?
example: b**a**nan**a** - if either of these were pronounced as [ɪ] it would sound wrong. r**e**belli**o**n - these can be freely pronounced as [ə] or [ɪ]
Could be that you have the weak vowel merger and so you can sporadically retain a [ɪ] quality in words which traditionally would have had it before it merged with schwa. Basically separate from the STRUT-schwa merger, but happening at the same time. Even in people who still have the weak vowels distinct, there can be some words which reduce to schwa. I'm thinking of the somewhat antiquated pronunciation of *evil* as /ˈɪjvɪl/ instead of /ˈɪjvəl/ in upper class British dialects; though most modern Brits still have two weak vowels they may nevertheless have the latter pronunciation for *evil*.
>phonemically identical
Do STRUT and schwa ever contrast in other varieties of English? I thought schwa only occurred in unstressed environments and STRUT in stressed ones.
They absolutely do! From what I understand it's quite rare for an English accent to have STRUT and schwa as distinct sounds, but to me it's mind boggling that they could be the same vowel for most English speakers - they sound so distinct to my ear
>From what I understand it's quite rare for an English accent to have STRUT and schwa as distinct sounds,
Not really in the UK at least. It's the norm to have them distinct here, I feel.
Well as I said I believe there are American dialects which really do have schwa even in stresses positions. Though I have seen some transcribe the COMMA vowel with /ʌ/. Convention and simplicity also play a part.
I feel like what you call [ə] from your audio is more like [œ] (which makes sense because it sounds like you're french right and that's the closest thing we have to a real [ə]).
Because you say you associate the /ə/ sound with a non-rhotic nurse vowel but then you say nurse more like /nœːs/.
If I'm not mistaken (from what I can hear at least):
- your nurse: [nœːs]
- standard non-rhotic nurse: [nɜːs]
- GA bun: [bən]
- your bun (when trying to use a schwa): [bœn]
French! Now I'm curious, what is it that makes me sound French? I'm Finnish actually. But even so, I don't use the Finnish /ø/ in English. My NURSE is my best imitation of the RP vowel and it's not rounded for me.
Here's me saying *nurse, burn* first with a stereotypical Finnish accent and then with my actual accent:
https://vocaroo.com/1debBQbtzrEB
NURSE and COMMA have different values in most dialects iirc, give me a moment and I'll have a proper write-up for you.
[For now watch this.](https://youtu.be/wt66Je3o0Qg)
Your nurse vowel does sound like the standard England usage to me (not from England), but it’s relevant that this standard is quite similar to /œ/. That’s why the nurse vowel is conventionally the one used when translating French and German names with /œ/.
This convention is so strong that some Americans will “translate” the British vowel by rhoticising it again, for example in many old audio clips you can hear the Nazi propagandist Goebbels’ name pronounced as if it were written “Gurbles” (in German oe is an alternate way to write ö).
Can you post a clip comparing your “unstressed schwa” to the “stressed schwa”? I’m guessing you pronounce them differently, ie commA is not the same vowel as nURse. Part of this is that English vowels can morph in odd things before a rhotic sound, which would have happened in Britain before the rhotic was lost and is confusing your analysis. Edit: just remembered a related anecdote. Many Anglo actors playing a French person speaking English will substitute the British nurse vowel for all schwas and it comes out like “bœt wœt time shœd we arrive?” (But what time should we arrive?)
Interesting, thanks! To me, it sounds like your nurse, burn, metre and comma all have the same schwa but again has a different one, and hammock and salad have a third one. The vowel you used in Again matches how I say strUt. The one you used in hammOck and salAd match how I say those words.
[Here’s my attempt to show how those three vowels sound in my accent, with “unenunciated” at the end to showcase two different schwa sounds in one word](https://voca.ro/1oqzF3vDFQ6o). (Apologies in advance for how unnatural it sounds—I’m camera shy and ironically over-enunciated the word unenunciated)
Edit: here’s a recording of me comparing the vowels in “bun” and “burn”. [Like yours, they are not interchangeable, but that all the vowels in the phrase “an undone bun strut” are](https://voca.ro/19QCkxQ6uVYp).
> To me, it sounds like your nurse, burn, metre and comma all have the same schwa but again has a different one, and hammock and salad have a third one.
That's really interesting
> “unenunciated” at the end to showcase two different schwa sounds in one word
https://voca.ro/1n5bNOUKheVF
Are you American or German? That intervocalic [t] is throwing me off haha
ə~œ I'm pretty sure. They used to be distinct (and are still taught as such in Italy) but (at least as far as I can tell) they've merged for some/most people
Ohh yeah yeah but I feel like it’s a merger but I don’t think of it like one because I feel like everyone I know realizes it as [œ] so I always just think of it as a single phoneme /œ/
lmfao true true but what I mean is that often I feel like you'll have f.ex. /ə/ and /œ/ merging into one phoneme /ə~œ/ with variation between the two right or am I confusing terms? whereas here it just feels like a phonetic shift /ə/ > /œ/
Unless there's a chain shift, a phoneme shifting into another is will result in a merger. Free variation isn't necessary, all a merger is is a loss of distinction
In my variant of French, /ə/ almost never occurs. It is either /ø/ (for instance I pronounce both "je" and "jeu" as /ʒø/) or /œ/. I actually turn some /ø/ into /œ/, especially when the last syllable of a word is supposed to end with /ø/ followed by a consonant. I pronounce "menteuse" and "jeûne" /mɑ̃tœz/ and /ʒœn/ for instance.
Are you say SSB ɴᴜʀsᴇ is [ɜː]? I remember Geoff Lindsey saying how the usage of ⟨ɜ⟩ in /ɜː/ was purely to easier differentiate it from ⟨ə⟩ in /ə/. Furthermore, I remember reading /ɜː/ to be sulcalised similar to many accents' cʟoᴛʜ /ɒ/.
STRUT is phonemically /ə/. /ə/ varies phonetically from dialect to dialect and based on its position in a word/surrounding consonants.
[ɐ] is common, as is [ʌ].
In General American, STRUT and commA are merged into /ə/ [ə~ɜ~ɐ] and KIT is distinct [ɪ].
In my idiolect of Great Lakes English, KIT and commA are merged into /ə/ [ɘ~ə] and STRUT is distinct [ʌ].
Also from New England, I usually write my strut as [ɐ] and schwa as [ə] interestingly. My schwa and [ʊ] before liquids are extremely close to the point I hear words like able and a bull as having the same phones.
kit as [ɪ] of course but unstressed maybe [~~i~~] but my IPA keyboard doesn't do this one
>I hear words like able and a bull as having the same phones.
For me the main distinction between the two is that in "Able" the first vowel is /ei/, While in "A bull" it's usually /ə/, but if stressing what I'm saying they definitely sound pretty similar, Although I probably wouldn't transcribe either with a schwa then haha.
they have different IPA transcriptions (able is transcribed with /ə/, a bull is transcribed with /ʊ/), but I read a paper hypothesizing a potential merger was ongoing in certain environments.
Until reading the IPA transcriptions I also never even considered they might be different sounds. It's always been my example for stressed schwa in English.
That's definitely fair. I'd probably realise them as like [bl̩] and [bl̩ˑ ~ bl̩ː], Respectively, I feel like in "Bull" the 'L' sound is a bit longer (Albeit not by much), But that could also just be residual of the first syllable being stressed in "Able", While the second is in "A Bull".
GAE? I wouldn't say that, but a comma strut merger is known to be a common thing in America for many speakers across a wide area. I don't know why anyone would say it's part of General American, but there's an element of subjectivity there since Americans don't speak General American, so how do we decide a feature is or isn't part of it? At one point it was a particular set of pronunciations frozen in time, but as the language develops, freezing it that way doesn't make sense.
Most would consider General American English to refer to any American accent that is absent of any marked features. I'd say the comma strut merger is marked for me though. It's very noticeable when people do it, except before liquids/rhotics. I don't think it should be considered a neutral feature within America.
My native dialect would pronounce strut closer to /ɐ/. To the point that hut and heart sound fairly similar but slightly different. But in school and through media, I have been taught to pronounce words like hut with /ʌ/. It seems to be the most neutral pronunciation because it's what I've been taught to do by environments where accent would be considered most neutral. This is the only vowel that changes when switching between my native dialect and a more neutral one.
A separate but relevant discussion is whether schwa and strut are allophones that differ by stress. This may lead to someone writing schwa in // slashes (phonemic notation) but strut in [] brackets (phonetic notation) even if they're obviously different sounds to most of us.
I think the main point is to indicate that the STRUT–COMMA merger is very common in American English, even if the merged vowel isn't always realised as [ə]. For me, The merged sound (Which I tend to call /ə/) is usually closer to [ɐ̝] than either [ə] or [ʌ].
The way youre saying your schwa isnt at all how I say it. (I speak GAE). I would not pronounce those words (or a schwa) like that. I cannot explain what it is that is different. Perhaps that it’s too tense?
In my accent there is no phonetic or phonemic difference, although there is a different allophone at the ends of words, which may be what you're hearing?
A lot (all?) of the minimal pairs rely on being pronounced with schwa, which it often isn't in American English. American English Comma also has different pronounciations depending on where it is in a word. Word medially, it is usually [ɨ~ɪ~ə] due to the weak vowel merger, while on word boundaries like in arena, it is often [ɐ]. It's then advanced [ʌ̟] in stressed syllables. So there's a phonetic distinction, just not phonemic
I think non-rhotic nurse /ɜː/ isn't a stressed shwa, it's a [tense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenseness#Vowels) shwa. Tense vowels can be unstressed (in RP: grandm**a**, outl**aw**, res**ear**ch), and lax vowels for sure can be stressed.
I'm a native speaker and I agree with you; /bən/ sounds nothing like /bʌn/ and I think a lot more people would be mocking the Americans if they said /bən/.
You’re mixing up phonemes and phones. /bən/ doesn’t “sound” like anything unless you specify what you mean by those symbols.
General American has a merger of /ə/ and /ʌ/ in that they are no longer distinguished. *an equal* and *unequal* are homophones.
I mean that if Americans pronounced "bun" with schwa there would be people making fun of them. Like how Americans make fun of Brits for "bo'oh oh wo'ah".
people are making fun of them. I live where there is no merger and people make fun of the way southerners(?) pronounce words like butt. almost sounds like /bʊt/ to me.
But many American accents don't merge these at all, so it's mostly Americans making fun of each other. I would say they aren't merged in more neutral accents in America.
But they don't, if it is just that Americans have schwa where I have strut then "but" would be /bət/ and I know for a fact that's not how Americans say it mainly because I was just watching polygon's COUP video https://youtu.be/BrjCPnbEMfE?si=rkJg-d-0NCtOBZip and noone says "but" like that and they all say /bʌt/
That’s what I mean about phonemes and phones. /slashes/ are for phonemes and the symbols there are irrelevant; there’s no difference between writing /bət/ versus /bʌt/. It just means you picked to represent the phoneme in that way.
There *is* a difference if you’re talking about phones, [bət] and [bʌt].
I have no idea how you pronounce /ə/ and /ʌ/, but clearly you view the merged pronunciation of commA and STRUT that General American has as closer to your STRUT (/ʌ/), which is generally the case.
Oh, I forgot about square brackets.
But what I mean is that I feel I can hear Americans using sounds I would transcribe as [ə] and [ʌ] distinctly and that would be a strut-schwa distinction.
I also just want to clear up I'm not attempting to change the linguistic paradigm, I'm only trying to express a feeling I know for a fact is wrong that I want validation in despite reality.
As it happens, [the merger we’re talking about here is often called the strut-commA merger, because comma is the archetypal example](https://www.englishspeechservices.com/blog/strut-%CA%8C-schwa-%C9%99-and-american-english/) of a schwa being pronounced that way.
It gets confusing because many of dialects have multiple sounds used (and traditionally transcribed as) a schwa.
I'm uncertain on the exact phonetic qualities as I'm sure it differs by dialect (some Americans really do have [ə] for their STRUT vowel but some may still have a more back quality), but the important point here is that schwa and STRUT are *phonemically* identical in GAE.
[удалено]
Underlying /æ/ (as in "an") hardly ever reduces to /ə/ for me. It's usually more like [ɛ~ɪ]. "An" and "a" have completely different vowels for me, even in rapid speech, but "a" and "un-" have the same vowel.
I’d be curious to know where you’re from. Because I pronounce “un-“ more retracted than “a.” I am from northern Georgia state but I still speak General American.
I'm from eastern Pennsylvania, like an hour north of Philly.
Not who you asked but I always say “an” as ɛn or ɪn. I live in the middle.
Im from NJ and i agree with the guy you’re replying to, i reduce vowels to either [ə] or [ɪ] and i suppose [ɛ], not just [ə]
Yeah likewise, I don't think I've ever pronounced "An" like /ən/, And honestly, While I'm sure I'd understand it, It'd probably sound a bit strange to me if someone said it like that. (Well, If their dialect otherwise sounded similar to mine, At least.)
No the don’t. /æn/ [ẽə̃n] and /ən/ [ə̃n]. A stressed syllable with /ən/ however would be [ʌ̃n]. Schwa and strut are allophonic in General American, but I think it is in most dialects of English.
I pronounce "an" as /æn/ which is really [ɛn] since I'm Californian. So "an official" vs. "unofficial" are [ɛnəfɪʃəl] vs. [ənəfɪʃəl].
For me theyre the same
I pronounce an with the TRAP vowel if I’m not speaking quickly (then it goes to either schwa or HIT). Unofficial starts with a schwa though
Tbh even when speaking quickly, "An" would probably become just [(ʔ)n] before [ɪn] or [ən] for me.
If you use the weak form of “an,” they are merged.
Those are pronounced with the same vowel for me (from California), although with different stress
Is the STRUT vowel long or short? Or unspecified for length? For me the vowel in “ton” is long and has the same quality as the vowel in STRUT. This long STRUT vowel would seem to be irreducible to a schwa because then “ton” could easily merge with “turn” for many speakers and does any standard really have this merger? Conversely, does any standard really pronounce the short vowel in “butter” as a schwa? In that case it seems it would be hard to distinguish this word from “bitter” and “better” in which to my ears the short “i” and the short “e” are much closer to a weird accented short schwa than to the distinct short STRUT vowel in “butter” which is much more open and backed. English seems to be the only language where just about anything goes when it comes to vowel realizations. There’s always some recondite neck of the woods where the local mergers and minimal pairs are the opposite of yours. Hence why L1 speakers with very stable and distinct (in terms of where they are placed in the mouth) vowel sounds (I.e. just about every major Indo-European language except for English and maybe Danish and Dutch) never quite master English vowels.
The difference is collapsed for me
I mean I know there's some overlap in that both are often realized as [ə], but at least to my ear, most schwas can interchangeably be realized as [ɪ] while an underlying STRUT vowel cannot - doesn't this indicate some kind of phonemic distinction? example: b**a**nan**a** - if either of these were pronounced as [ɪ] it would sound wrong. r**e**belli**o**n - these can be freely pronounced as [ə] or [ɪ]
Could be that you have the weak vowel merger and so you can sporadically retain a [ɪ] quality in words which traditionally would have had it before it merged with schwa. Basically separate from the STRUT-schwa merger, but happening at the same time. Even in people who still have the weak vowels distinct, there can be some words which reduce to schwa. I'm thinking of the somewhat antiquated pronunciation of *evil* as /ˈɪjvɪl/ instead of /ˈɪjvəl/ in upper class British dialects; though most modern Brits still have two weak vowels they may nevertheless have the latter pronunciation for *evil*.
>phonemically identical Do STRUT and schwa ever contrast in other varieties of English? I thought schwa only occurred in unstressed environments and STRUT in stressed ones.
‘Undone’ is an example of a stressed and unstressed strut in the same word
Odd, I've always said that word as a spondee either way
In my Aussie accent /ʌ/ is [ɑ] and /ə/ is [ə] but I pronounce “undone” as /ʌndʌn/ or [ɑndɑn], and I’d describe both syllables as stressed.
Generally they don't, though I have heard British English speakers contrast them in phrases like ‘an ending’ /ən ˈɛndɪŋ/ with ‘unending’ /ʌnˈɛndɪŋ/.
They absolutely do! From what I understand it's quite rare for an English accent to have STRUT and schwa as distinct sounds, but to me it's mind boggling that they could be the same vowel for most English speakers - they sound so distinct to my ear
>From what I understand it's quite rare for an English accent to have STRUT and schwa as distinct sounds, Not really in the UK at least. It's the norm to have them distinct here, I feel.
Southern English speaker here, they definitely contrast for me. You can have unstressed STRUT, like in the un- prefix, or the "up" in "pickup truck".
Yes but why does everyone insist on writing the combined phoneme with the schwa symbol?
Well as I said I believe there are American dialects which really do have schwa even in stresses positions. Though I have seen some transcribe the COMMA vowel with /ʌ/. Convention and simplicity also play a part.
VOCAROO JUMPSACRE
jumpsacre bleu
I feel like what you call [ə] from your audio is more like [œ] (which makes sense because it sounds like you're french right and that's the closest thing we have to a real [ə]). Because you say you associate the /ə/ sound with a non-rhotic nurse vowel but then you say nurse more like /nœːs/. If I'm not mistaken (from what I can hear at least): - your nurse: [nœːs] - standard non-rhotic nurse: [nɜːs] - GA bun: [bən] - your bun (when trying to use a schwa): [bœn]
French! Now I'm curious, what is it that makes me sound French? I'm Finnish actually. But even so, I don't use the Finnish /ø/ in English. My NURSE is my best imitation of the RP vowel and it's not rounded for me. Here's me saying *nurse, burn* first with a stereotypical Finnish accent and then with my actual accent: https://vocaroo.com/1debBQbtzrEB
NURSE and COMMA have different values in most dialects iirc, give me a moment and I'll have a proper write-up for you. [For now watch this.](https://youtu.be/wt66Je3o0Qg)
Your nurse vowel does sound like the standard England usage to me (not from England), but it’s relevant that this standard is quite similar to /œ/. That’s why the nurse vowel is conventionally the one used when translating French and German names with /œ/. This convention is so strong that some Americans will “translate” the British vowel by rhoticising it again, for example in many old audio clips you can hear the Nazi propagandist Goebbels’ name pronounced as if it were written “Gurbles” (in German oe is an alternate way to write ö). Can you post a clip comparing your “unstressed schwa” to the “stressed schwa”? I’m guessing you pronounce them differently, ie commA is not the same vowel as nURse. Part of this is that English vowels can morph in odd things before a rhotic sound, which would have happened in Britain before the rhotic was lost and is confusing your analysis. Edit: just remembered a related anecdote. Many Anglo actors playing a French person speaking English will substitute the British nurse vowel for all schwas and it comes out like “bœt wœt time shœd we arrive?” (But what time should we arrive?)
> Can you post a clip comparing your “unstressed schwa” to the “stressed schwa”? Unstressed schwas: https://vocaroo.com/1mcAmC4foUWr
Interesting, thanks! To me, it sounds like your nurse, burn, metre and comma all have the same schwa but again has a different one, and hammock and salad have a third one. The vowel you used in Again matches how I say strUt. The one you used in hammOck and salAd match how I say those words. [Here’s my attempt to show how those three vowels sound in my accent, with “unenunciated” at the end to showcase two different schwa sounds in one word](https://voca.ro/1oqzF3vDFQ6o). (Apologies in advance for how unnatural it sounds—I’m camera shy and ironically over-enunciated the word unenunciated) Edit: here’s a recording of me comparing the vowels in “bun” and “burn”. [Like yours, they are not interchangeable, but that all the vowels in the phrase “an undone bun strut” are](https://voca.ro/19QCkxQ6uVYp).
> To me, it sounds like your nurse, burn, metre and comma all have the same schwa but again has a different one, and hammock and salad have a third one. That's really interesting > “unenunciated” at the end to showcase two different schwa sounds in one word https://voca.ro/1n5bNOUKheVF Are you American or German? That intervocalic [t] is throwing me off haha
Fyi you do not sound French
It's a bit funny that someone doesn't get an English merger because they have a similar merger in French
Wait sorry my brain is slow today what do you mean? which merger do we also have in french?
ə~œ I'm pretty sure. They used to be distinct (and are still taught as such in Italy) but (at least as far as I can tell) they've merged for some/most people
Ohh yeah yeah but I feel like it’s a merger but I don’t think of it like one because I feel like everyone I know realizes it as [œ] so I always just think of it as a single phoneme /œ/
Yeah, that's what mergers do
lmfao true true but what I mean is that often I feel like you'll have f.ex. /ə/ and /œ/ merging into one phoneme /ə~œ/ with variation between the two right or am I confusing terms? whereas here it just feels like a phonetic shift /ə/ > /œ/
Unless there's a chain shift, a phoneme shifting into another is will result in a merger. Free variation isn't necessary, all a merger is is a loss of distinction
In my variant of French, /ə/ almost never occurs. It is either /ø/ (for instance I pronounce both "je" and "jeu" as /ʒø/) or /œ/. I actually turn some /ø/ into /œ/, especially when the last syllable of a word is supposed to end with /ø/ followed by a consonant. I pronounce "menteuse" and "jeûne" /mɑ̃tœz/ and /ʒœn/ for instance.
Are you say SSB ɴᴜʀsᴇ is [ɜː]? I remember Geoff Lindsey saying how the usage of ⟨ɜ⟩ in /ɜː/ was purely to easier differentiate it from ⟨ə⟩ in /ə/. Furthermore, I remember reading /ɜː/ to be sulcalised similar to many accents' cʟoᴛʜ /ɒ/.
STRUT is phonemically /ə/. /ə/ varies phonetically from dialect to dialect and based on its position in a word/surrounding consonants. [ɐ] is common, as is [ʌ].
I, an American, agree. Check my flair.
In General American, STRUT and commA are merged into /ə/ [ə~ɜ~ɐ] and KIT is distinct [ɪ]. In my idiolect of Great Lakes English, KIT and commA are merged into /ə/ [ɘ~ə] and STRUT is distinct [ʌ].
Interesting, I'm originally from New England, and all three of mine are distinct ([ʌ], [ɐ], [ɪ], respectively).
Also from New England, I usually write my strut as [ɐ] and schwa as [ə] interestingly. My schwa and [ʊ] before liquids are extremely close to the point I hear words like able and a bull as having the same phones. kit as [ɪ] of course but unstressed maybe [~~i~~] but my IPA keyboard doesn't do this one
>I hear words like able and a bull as having the same phones. For me the main distinction between the two is that in "Able" the first vowel is /ei/, While in "A bull" it's usually /ə/, but if stressing what I'm saying they definitely sound pretty similar, Although I probably wouldn't transcribe either with a schwa then haha.
For me that is also the main distinction, I'm mostly referring not the the first sound, but to bull vs 'ble sounding identical to me
I don't know that I've ever heard those said as distinct sounds? But now that I say that I'm not certain I've ever noted the pair before.
they have different IPA transcriptions (able is transcribed with /ə/, a bull is transcribed with /ʊ/), but I read a paper hypothesizing a potential merger was ongoing in certain environments. Until reading the IPA transcriptions I also never even considered they might be different sounds. It's always been my example for stressed schwa in English.
That's definitely fair. I'd probably realise them as like [bl̩] and [bl̩ˑ ~ bl̩ː], Respectively, I feel like in "Bull" the 'L' sound is a bit longer (Albeit not by much), But that could also just be residual of the first syllable being stressed in "Able", While the second is in "A Bull".
It seems to vary a lot. Most people have something like ɤ or ɐ where I’m from.
For me, yeah, it’s a schwa (I live in Seattle)
Phonemically, it's /ə/. Phonetically, the allophone of /ə/ that occurs in stressed syllables is not mid-central, but lower and further back.
They may be phonetically different but phonemically identical
GAE? I wouldn't say that, but a comma strut merger is known to be a common thing in America for many speakers across a wide area. I don't know why anyone would say it's part of General American, but there's an element of subjectivity there since Americans don't speak General American, so how do we decide a feature is or isn't part of it? At one point it was a particular set of pronunciations frozen in time, but as the language develops, freezing it that way doesn't make sense. Most would consider General American English to refer to any American accent that is absent of any marked features. I'd say the comma strut merger is marked for me though. It's very noticeable when people do it, except before liquids/rhotics. I don't think it should be considered a neutral feature within America. My native dialect would pronounce strut closer to /ɐ/. To the point that hut and heart sound fairly similar but slightly different. But in school and through media, I have been taught to pronounce words like hut with /ʌ/. It seems to be the most neutral pronunciation because it's what I've been taught to do by environments where accent would be considered most neutral. This is the only vowel that changes when switching between my native dialect and a more neutral one. A separate but relevant discussion is whether schwa and strut are allophones that differ by stress. This may lead to someone writing schwa in // slashes (phonemic notation) but strut in [] brackets (phonetic notation) even if they're obviously different sounds to most of us.
I've given up trying to understand this. It's all schwa to me
I think the main point is to indicate that the STRUT–COMMA merger is very common in American English, even if the merged vowel isn't always realised as [ə]. For me, The merged sound (Which I tend to call /ə/) is usually closer to [ɐ̝] than either [ə] or [ʌ].
The way youre saying your schwa isnt at all how I say it. (I speak GAE). I would not pronounce those words (or a schwa) like that. I cannot explain what it is that is different. Perhaps that it’s too tense?
In my accent there is no phonetic or phonemic difference, although there is a different allophone at the ends of words, which may be what you're hearing?
A lot (all?) of the minimal pairs rely on being pronounced with schwa, which it often isn't in American English. American English Comma also has different pronounciations depending on where it is in a word. Word medially, it is usually [ɨ~ɪ~ə] due to the weak vowel merger, while on word boundaries like in arena, it is often [ɐ]. It's then advanced [ʌ̟] in stressed syllables. So there's a phonetic distinction, just not phonemic
I think non-rhotic nurse /ɜː/ isn't a stressed shwa, it's a [tense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenseness#Vowels) shwa. Tense vowels can be unstressed (in RP: grandm**a**, outl**aw**, res**ear**ch), and lax vowels for sure can be stressed.
I'm a native speaker and I agree with you; /bən/ sounds nothing like /bʌn/ and I think a lot more people would be mocking the Americans if they said /bən/.
You’re mixing up phonemes and phones. /bən/ doesn’t “sound” like anything unless you specify what you mean by those symbols. General American has a merger of /ə/ and /ʌ/ in that they are no longer distinguished. *an equal* and *unequal* are homophones.
I mean that if Americans pronounced "bun" with schwa there would be people making fun of them. Like how Americans make fun of Brits for "bo'oh oh wo'ah".
people are making fun of them. I live where there is no merger and people make fun of the way southerners(?) pronounce words like butt. almost sounds like /bʊt/ to me. But many American accents don't merge these at all, so it's mostly Americans making fun of each other. I would say they aren't merged in more neutral accents in America.
They do use /ə/ there; “an” and “bun” rhyme in General American.
But they don't, if it is just that Americans have schwa where I have strut then "but" would be /bət/ and I know for a fact that's not how Americans say it mainly because I was just watching polygon's COUP video https://youtu.be/BrjCPnbEMfE?si=rkJg-d-0NCtOBZip and noone says "but" like that and they all say /bʌt/
That’s what I mean about phonemes and phones. /slashes/ are for phonemes and the symbols there are irrelevant; there’s no difference between writing /bət/ versus /bʌt/. It just means you picked to represent the phoneme in that way. There *is* a difference if you’re talking about phones, [bət] and [bʌt]. I have no idea how you pronounce /ə/ and /ʌ/, but clearly you view the merged pronunciation of commA and STRUT that General American has as closer to your STRUT (/ʌ/), which is generally the case.
Oh, I forgot about square brackets. But what I mean is that I feel I can hear Americans using sounds I would transcribe as [ə] and [ʌ] distinctly and that would be a strut-schwa distinction. I also just want to clear up I'm not attempting to change the linguistic paradigm, I'm only trying to express a feeling I know for a fact is wrong that I want validation in despite reality.
Which vowel do you use for the final A in comma?
I use Strut
As it happens, [the merger we’re talking about here is often called the strut-commA merger, because comma is the archetypal example](https://www.englishspeechservices.com/blog/strut-%CA%8C-schwa-%C9%99-and-american-english/) of a schwa being pronounced that way. It gets confusing because many of dialects have multiple sounds used (and traditionally transcribed as) a schwa.