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This is a short vowel sound. It's pronounced uh. And to make this sound, you just relax your mouth.

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You try. Listen and repeat. Uh. And again. Uh. In fact, this is a very common sound in English.

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And in many grammar words, it's the only vowel sound, such as uh, the, of, that.

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Let's practice these.

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Listen and repeat.

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A.

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The.

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Of.

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That.

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Now you also get this sound in many words of more than one syllable.

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Listen.

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About.

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Common.

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Standard.

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Butter.

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Let's practice.

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Listen to me and repeat.

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about, common, standard, butter. Good. You could say that the vowel a is the most important

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vowel in English. In fact, it's so important it has its own name. It's called John. No,

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not really. It's actually called schwa. Schwa, which is pretty strange when you think about

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it because the word schwa doesn't have the schwa sound a in it. So why is this sound

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so important? Well, it's a very natural sound for English speakers and it's actually the

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most frequent sound in English. It appears in just about every word with more than two

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syllables and it's very important for getting the stress and rhythm of English right. Schwa

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is usually in unstressed syllables. Let's have a look at some examples. Accused, banana,

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father, camera. OK, now you try. Listen and repeat. Accused, banana, father, camera. Now

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as well as being a part of many words, schwa can also be the pronunciation for a whole

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word itself and to show you this I'm going to need an assistant. A cup of tea.

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Thank you. An ordinary cup of tea but listen to what happens when I say the

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words a and of naturally. A cup of tea. A cup of tea. The words a and of become

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schwa, a. Now you try listen and repeat after me. A cup of tea. A cup of tea. Good. Now

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this is such a natural and common way to pronounce cup of that in British English the word cuppa

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actually means a cup of tea. And after all that I'm really looking forward to my cuppa.

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Actually, what I really fancy is a piece of cake.