This article describes Unstressed and reduced vowels in English language.

An unstressed vowel is the vowel sound that forms the syllable peak of a syllable that has no lexical stress. A reduced vowel is one of the vowels that can only occur in unstressed syllables, like schwa. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ... In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Reduced vowels

Schwa is the most common reduced vowel in English language, and may be denoted by any of the vowel letters: Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

• The a in about.
• The e in synthesis.
• The o in harmony.
• The u in medium.

The following are also schwas, except in dialects that have two distinct reduced vowels (see below).

• The i in decimal.
• The y in syringe.

Whereas the sound represented by the er in water is a schwa in non-rhotic accents like Received Pronunciation, in rhotic dialects like most of North American English, "er" designates an r-colored schwa, [ɚ], which is pronounced like schwa, except the tongue is pulled back in the mouth and "bunched up". English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the phoneme (the letter r, equivalent to Greek rho) is pronounced. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...   In phonetics, an r-colored vowel or rhotacized vowel is a vowel either with the tip or blade of the tongue turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel (a retroflex articulation) or with the tip of the tongue down and the back of the tongue...

In some dialects of English there is a distinction between two vowel heights of reduced vowels, schwa and barred i, the close central unrounded vowel /ɨ/. In the British phonetic tradition, /ɪ/ is used to transcribe this vowel in British English instead of /ɨ/, but the sound is the same. An example of a minimal pair contrasting schwa and barred i: In phonetics, vowel height refers to the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth in a vowel sound. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have a distinct meaning. ...

• The e in roses is a barred i
• The a in Rosa's is a schwa

The other sounds that can serve as the peak of reduced syllables are the syllabic consonants. The consonants that can be syllabic in English are the nasals /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, and /l/ (actually a dark l). For example: A syllabic consonant is a consonant which constitutes either a syllable of its own, or is the nucleus of a syllable. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... A dark l is a common way of referring to a velarised alveolar lateral approximant. ...

• The m in prism is sometimes a syllabic /m/.
• The on in button is a syllabic /n/ in dialects that pronounce intervocalic 't' as a glottal stop.
• The word and in the phrase lock and key in more rapid speech is sometimes pronounced as a syllabic /ŋ/.
• The le in cycle and bottle is a syllablic /l/.

Intervocalic is an adjective used in linguistics to denote a consonant (or sometimes a semivowel) that appears between vowel sounds. ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ...

Unstressed vowels

Most other vowels in American English can occur in unstressed syllables. Exceptions include /e/, /ɔ/, /aʊ/, and /ʌ/

For example:

See also

• Schwa
• Tenseness
• Vowel reduction