It is the weak neutral sound that we hear in the first syllable of the word machine – in the definite article: the machine – and in the indefinite article: a machine – and it is the only phonetic symbol that has a proper name: schwa. There is actually one more short vowel, but it is in a class by itself. So pay special attention to these when you study the phonetic alphabet.
My pronunciation may not correspond to every English-speaker’s pronunciation of these words – My American accent produces “clock” and “stop” rather than a more British sounding clock and stop, and the other words have a variety of pronunciations in various parts of the British Isles. They are the sounds of words like: clock, stop – that, hat – put, book. In the numbers one, six, seven and ten we encountered three short vowel sounds. These diphthongs are indicated by the double symbols A-plus-I for five and nine, and E-plus-I for eight: The vowel sounds here are called diphthongs, which means that the sound glides from one vowel to the other. The remaining numbers are five, eight and nine. And note that the final R in the word four does not appear in the transcription. The two dots to the right of the letter indicate that these are long vowels: two, three, four. But in one we find a totally unusual symbol, a sort of upside-down V, or a small capital A without the crossbar another short vowel sound. In six there is a sort of miniature capital ‘I’ symbol representing the short sound ‘i’. In seven and ten we find a perfectly normal short ‘e’ sound. To begin with, look at one, six, seven and ten. These numbers contain quite a selection of vowel sounds. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. This presentation is the second part of an overview of the symbols that we use in our phonetic transcriptions.