What sound can all vowels be reduced to?

schwa
The reduced vowel sound called schwa is the most common vowel sound in spoken English. Schwa is a quick, relaxed, neutral vowel pronunciation very close to a ‘short u’ /ʌ/.

What is lowering in linguistics?

In phonology and phonetics, raising is a sound change in which a vowel or consonant becomes higher or raised, meaning that the tongue becomes more elevated or positioned closer to the roof of the mouth than before. The opposite effect is known as lowering. This phonetics article is a stub.

What was the effect of lengthening and shortening of vowels?

Two sound changes with opposite effects took place during the Middle English period: lengthening and shortening. As the names imply, one made certain short vowels from Old English long and the other made certain long vowels short. Our textbook discusses the changes, which are summarized here using examples from the Babel passage. Lengthening 1.

What are the names of the short vowels in English?

Vowel length in English. The vowels of Received Pronunciation are commonly divided into short and long phonemes. The short vowels are /ɪ/ (as in kit ), /ʊ/ (as in foot ), /ɛ/ (as in dress ), /ʌ/ (as in strut ), /æ/ (as in trap ), /ɒ/ (as in lot ), and /ə/ (as in the first syllable of ago and in the second of sofa ).

Is there a phonemic distinction between short and long vowels?

Many languages make a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels: Arabic, Sanskrit, Japanese, Hebrew, Finnish, Hungarian, Kannada, etc. Long vowels may or may not be analyzed as separate phonemes. In Latin and Hungarian, long vowels are analyzed as separate phonemes from short vowels, which doubles the number of vowel phonemes.

When do you lengthen a vowel in Babel?

1. When short [a], [E], or [ç] appears in an open syllable (the vowel followed by a single consonant followed by a vowel), the vowel is lengthened. The three examples below from the Babel passage all concern short [a]: OE nama ME na#me macien ma#ke same sa#me 2.