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xkcd #2907: Schwa (imgs.xkcd.com)

submitted 9 months ago by randomaccount43543@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world

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https://xkcd.com/2907

Alt text:

Doug's cousin, the one from London, runs a Bumble love cult.

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[-] randomaccount43543@lemmy.world 103 points 9 months ago

https://explainxkcd.com/2907

[-] captainastronaut@seattlelunarsociety.org 29 points 9 months ago

Thank you!

[-] Nighed@sffa.community 16 points 9 months ago

the link to the wikipedia page with the audio clip really helped, made no sense without that.

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 7 points 9 months ago

I had no idea what the name of the sound was so I credit being a native speaker and reading the comic out loud with my understanding.

Do read it out loud - the more you exaggerate it the more fun it is.

Cannot believe how smart this guy is. If 10% of the planet were like Randall we would’ve cured cancer like the second time somebody got diagnosed with it.

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[-] sanguinepar@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

Never have I needed the explanation more than with this one.

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[-] TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 45 points 9 months ago

What kind of fucked-up Forest-Gump accent does Randall have?

[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

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[-] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 39 points 9 months ago

I bet these sentences sound super weird if you try to pronounce them without using any schwas.

[-] teft@lemmy.world 29 points 9 months ago

You would probably just sound like a non-native speaker. I assume it would be similar to weak forms and how weak forms are usually absent from non-native english speech.

[-] NoRodent@lemmy.world 25 points 9 months ago

As a non-native speaker, I was kinda confused at first by this comic because in my head the vowels definitely didn't sound all the same. But I personally consider pronunciation of vowels in English to be one of the greatest mysteries in the universe, so no wonder.

[-] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 9 months ago

As a native English speaker and Spanish learner, consistent vowel pronunciation is so incredible. 🥺 Just looking at a word and knowing how to pronounce it… amazing stuff. Kind of wild that in some languages you don’t have the ‘curse of the self educated’ (randomly mispronouncing words you’ve only read, not heard spoken).

[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

Yeah that blew my mind about Spanish. I was like, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN ALL THESE VOWELS ALWAYS HAVE THE SAME SOUND??? YOU ARE ALLOWED TO DO THAT!??"

Then I started trying to learn to conjugate verbs and I was like ohhhhh, ok, so fuck me.

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[-] bstix@feddit.dk 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Great.. now it reads like Apu from Simpsons.

[-] NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth 8 points 9 months ago

Do you mean Apu?

Abu was the monkey in Aladdin

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[-] ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 31 points 9 months ago

Don't a lot of these use the "strut" vowel (/ʌ/) and not schwa (/ə/) per se?

My transcription would be

/wʌts ʌp? wʌz dʌg gənə kʌm? dʌg lʌvz bɹʌntʃ. nʌʔʌ dʌgz stʌk kəz əv ə tʌnəl əbstɹʌkʃən. ə tɹʌk dʌmpt ə tʌn əv ʌnjənz. ʊχ./

[-] lugal@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

They merge in many accents merge these two sounds as Dr Geoff Lindsey explains here.

[-] ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Thank you for reminding me of this channel, I'd forgotten about it.

Interesting about the merging. Schwa has always been weird for me because in my dialect it can be many sounds. I grew up saying "obstruction" as [ʌbstɹʌkʃɪn] like those around me. Then I hit grade school and was told by a straight-faced teacher that both the first and last syllables in this and similar words were schwas while pronouncing them differently :)

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[-] TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

You use the same vowel for 'what' as you do for 'up'?

:confused Australian noises:

[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Oh you're Australian. Yeah, most dialects in the US say "what" and "up" with a schwa.

Wut up. The 'u' vowel sound in "up" is the same one in "what" in most American dialects.

The schwa is the same vowel sound in duzza. Wuzza uppa.

[-] ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 6 points 9 months ago

yup

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[-] Betch@lemmy.world 27 points 9 months ago

ləl

[-] hakase@lemm.ee 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Most phonologists I know would probably use wedge for most of these since they're stressed, because schwa is usually considered just an unstressed allophone of a bunch of different English vowels, and not an actual phoneme itself. Also, I have syllabic l in tunnel and barred i in cousin.

[-] itsnicodegallo@lemm.ee 15 points 9 months ago

I came here to say this. A bunch of these vowels are definitely pronounced with a wedge. Even tried intentionally pronuncing the stressed vowels with a schwa, and it's noticeably, jarringly off.

[-] systemglitch@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago

I don't get it.

[-] paris@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 9 months ago

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2907:_Schwa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu4zyRqILYM

[-] LemmyFeed@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

I'm even more confused now...

[-] _dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyz 29 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

They're all using only the 'uh' sound for every non-silent vowel in each word.

That 'uh' sound is apparently called the schwa in linguistics.

(edit: clarified after i had already hit the post button)

[-] Suburbanl3g3nd@lemmings.world 6 points 9 months ago

All the vowels make an 'uh' sound when you read the sentence out loud

[-] HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago

As a northern Englishman, this doesn't work for me

[-] HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

Although if I say it fast and lazily I guess it kinda does

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago

If I'm understanding it correctly, the name Schwartz has no schwa

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[-] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 14 points 9 months ago

Going through the comments, I've just learned so much about what makes my accent distinct and that uh and uh are apparently different

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[-] Worx@lemmynsfw.com 10 points 9 months ago

Not in my accent

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[-] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 10 points 9 months ago

Took me a goddamn while. Goddamn English and the lack of phonetic spelling!

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[-] dojan@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

I love this one. Fucked with my head a bit.

[-] Duranie@literature.cafe 13 points 9 months ago

Aaron earned an iron urn + Baltimore accent.

That video makes me cackle every damn time 🤣.

[-] MinusPi@yiffit.net 9 points 9 months ago

Holy shit that's impressive

[-] amanaftermidnight@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

The trend of dropping all vowels implies schwa subsuming them all.

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

This is reminiscent of a brief storyline from the Scrubs season that never happened.

[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

Tangentially related to getting stuck in a tunnel obstructed by onions: one time I was stuck in a traffic jam on I-95 in Philadelphia, traffic completely stopped for about three hours. Eventually we got moving again and passed the source of the jam. A semi carrying a load of honeydew melons had caught fire. I would have thought melons contained enough water to prevent them from burning, but that was not the case.

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[-] RustyNova@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

Would love hearing someone saying it out loud. I can't do it myself