Ə, or ə, also called schwa, is an additional

letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...

of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

. In the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...

(IPA), minuscule ə is used to represent the

mid central vowel The mid central vowel (also known as schwa) is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a ə, rotated lowercase letter e. While the ''Handbook of th ...

or a schwa. It was invented by

Johann Andreas Schmeller Johann Andreas Schmeller (6 August 1785 in Tirschenreuth – 27 September 1852 in Munich) was a German philologist who initially studied the Bavarian dialect. From 1828 until his death he taught in the University of Munich. He is considered the ...

for the reduced vowel at the end of some German words and first used in his 1820s works on the

Bavarian dialects Bavarian (german: Bairisch , Bavarian: ''Boarisch'') or alternately Austro-Bavarian, is a West Germanic language, part of the Upper German family, together with Alemannic and East Franconian. Bavarian is spoken by approximately 12 million peo ...

Usage

It is or was used in several languages around the world, including the Azerbaijani,

Gottscheerish Gottscheerish (''Göttscheabarisch'',Maridi Tscherne: Wörterbuch Gottscheerisch-Slowenisch. Einrichtung für die Erhaltung des Kulturerbes Nesseltal, Koprivnik/Nesseltal 2010. german: Gottscheerisch, sl, kočevarščina) is an Upper German ...

, Karay·a and Adyghe languages, the

Abenaki language Abenaki (''Eastern: Alənαpαtəwéwαkan, Western: Alnôbaôdwawôgan'') is an endangered Algonquian language of Quebec and the northern states of New England. The language has Eastern and Western forms which differ in vocabulary and phonolog ...

of Quebec, and in the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ dialect of Halkomelem. Both the

majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

and

minuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

forms of this letter are based on the form of a turned '' e'', while in Balinese it is not written formally but The Final orthographic ''-a'' is a schwa � meanwhile in

Pan-Nigerian alphabet The Pan-Nigerian alphabet is a set of 33 Latin letters standardised by the National Language Centre of Nigeria in the 1980s. It is intended to be sufficient to write all the languages of Nigeria without using digraphs. History Several hundred ...

pairs the same lowercase letter with Ǝ. A superscript minuscule () is used to modify the preceding consonant to have a mid central vowel release, though it is also commonly used to indicate possible syllabicity of the following

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...

, especially in transcriptions of English. The latter usage is non-standard. In the

Azerbaijani alphabet The Azerbaijani alphabet ( az, Azərbaycan əlifbası, , ) has three versions which includes the Arabic alphabet, Perso-Arabic, Latin alphabet, Latin, and Cyrillic alphabet, Cyrillic alphabets. Azerbaijani language, North Azerbaijani, the offic ...

, represents the

near-open front unrounded vowel The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase of the ligature. Bot ...

, , like the pronunciation of in "cat". The letter was used in the 1992 Chechen Latin alphabet proposal where it represented the

glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

, , like the pronunciation of in GA "button". It was also used in the

Uniform Turkic Alphabet A uniform is a variety of clothing worn by members of an organization while participating in that organization's activity. Modern uniforms are most often worn by armed forces and paramilitary organizations such as police, emergency services, ...

, for example in Janalif for the

Tatar language Tatar ( or ) is a Turkic languages, Turkic language spoken by Volga Tatars, Tatars mainly located in modern Tatarstan (European Russia), as well as Siberia. It should not be confused with Crimean Tatar language, Crimean Tatar or Siberian Tat ...

in the 1920s–1930s. Also, in a romanization of

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...

, the letter is used to represent . When some Roman orthographies in the Soviet Union were converted to use the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...

in the 1930s and 1940s, this letter has been adopted verbatim. In the Karay·a alphabet, the letter represents . In the Latin transliteration of

Avestan Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...

, the corresponding long vowel is written as schwa-macron, . An

R-colored vowel In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulate ...

can be represented using . A schwa with a retroflex hook is used in phonetic transcription.

For gender neutrality in Italian

In the 2020s, the schwa has seen some usage in the

Italian language Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 85 m ...

, replacing the

gendered Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...

suffixes of the language, in order to keep words

gender neutral Gender neutrality (adjective form: gender-neutral), also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures or gender roles) should avoid distinguish ...

. For example, the use of the schwa in the word (all/everyone), as opposed to (all/everyone, masculine plural). This niche usage is controversial—as well as mainly limited to written language, as there is no real consensus on how the ''-ə'' suffix should be pronounced—and has been criticized by the

Accademia della Crusca The Accademia della Crusca (; "Academy of the Bran"), generally abbreviated as La Crusca, is a Florence-based society of scholars of Italian linguistics and philology. It is one of the most important research institutions of the Italian language ...

. The president of the Accademia opposed its use, and the Accademia replied unfavorably to an initiative by the Equal Opportunities Committee of the Supreme Court of Cassation for the introduction of the schwa in juridical language, stating that "juridical language is not the place to experiment with minority-led innovations that would lead to irregularity and idiolects".

Unicode encodings

Since the legacy fixed 8-bit ISO/IEC Turkish encoding contains neither ''Ə'' nor ''ə'', '' Ä ä'' has sometimes been used for the

Azerbaijani language Azerbaijani () or Azeri (), also referred to as Azeri Turkic or Azeri Turkish, is a Turkic language from the Oghuz sub-branch spoken primarily by the Azerbaijani people, who live mainly in the Republic of Azerbaijan where the North Azerbaija ...

instead, as in the

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

and

Turkmen language Turkmen (, , , or , , , ), sometimes referred to as "Turkmen Turkic" or "Turkmen Turkish", is a Turkic language spoken by the Turkmens of Central Asia, mainly of Turkmenistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. It has an estimated 5 million native speakers ...

s. In Windows, the characters can be generated by holding the key and pressing the respective decimal Unicode number, which can be found in the table (e.g. 399, 601), on the number pad preceded by a leading . With a

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

compose key A compose key (sometimes called multi key) is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following (usually 2 or more) keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol. For insta ...

, the lowercase letter is by default generated by .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:EE Latin-script letters Phonetic transcription symbols Azerbaijani language