We all know that English spelling is rarely a good guide to pronunciation. One big reason for this is the prevalence of schwa in the spoken language. That's why dictionaries and other written guides ...

All of the finalists Thursday night could spell schwa, no doubt. It was the sound it makes that foiled many of them. By Maggie Astor and Remy Tumin After 14 rounds of words like “probouleutic” and ...

WASHINGTON — The word that knocked runner-up Naysa Modi out of last year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee was “Bewusstseinslage” — one of those flashy, impossible-sounding German-derived words that ...

In fact, any letter representing a vowel sound can be pronounced as schwa. For example, the first vowel in the word 'connect' is a schwa sound but it's written with the letter 'o', and the second ...