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Memorable Schwa Sets:

🤩️ BONUS SET #3  Place Names

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🤩️ BONUS SET #3  Place Names

This is a multi-part series on 'Selectively Lazy English'. If you're new, you can jump back to the first set of resources ... or start at the very beginning with my intro article.

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Your resources for this lesson are just below ...

very reliable patterns

  TIP:     It's a good idea listen to the audio without looking at the written examples – at least when you start.

All of the words in this section are examples of spelling patterns in place names, which contain a lazy schwa vowel sound very consistently. 

There are always exceptions, but these are pretty reliable.

FORD:

Oxford, Hertford, Watford, Stafford, Chelmsford, Ashford, Stratford     

HAM:

Buckingham Palace, Nottingham, Birmingham, Gillingham (Dorset), Gillingham (Kent), Wokingham

MOUTH:

Portsmouth, Plymouth, Exmouth, Weymouth, Bournemouth 

SHIRE:

Yorkshire, Lancashire, Hampshire, Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire

NOTE: Some speakers use a NEAR vowel instead for ‘shire’ endings. By itself, ‘shire’ (like a shire horse, or The Shire from Tolkein’s novels) rhymes with ‘higher’.

TOWN:

Euston, Brighton, Preston, Luton

BOROUGH*:

Scarborough, Peterborough, Marlborough, even ‘Edinburgh’

* see ‘borough’ and ‘thorough’, detailed in the next section

Other notable schwas in place names

IN LONDON:

St Pancras, Cadogan Square, Southwark (silent w & r).

less reliable patterns

BORN / BOURNE / BURN:

Holborn, Melbourne, Kilburn

But... this pattern has many exceptions that do NOT have a schwa: 

Osbourne, Ashbourne, Eastbourne, Blackburn

LAND:

England, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, Shetland, Midlands, upland / lowland

* Many exceptions where ‘land’ does NOT contain a schwa:

Thailand, Swaziland, Disneyland, fairyland, dreamland, fantasyland, motherland, badlands

WORTH:

Chatsworth, Wandsworth, Halesworth, Tamworth, Kenilworth

* Also note that many speakers lengthen the schwa with -worth words, so it effectively becomes a stronger NURSE vowel. Here both versions below, first a short schwa then a long NURSE vowel:

Notable exception: Worthing (here 'Wor' contains a NURSE vowel that is stressed)

The most important thing about ‘worth’ is that, when the schwa is long, it has the same NURSE vowel as the word ‘birth’. The word ‘worth’ does not have the vowel heard in ‘North’, but many ESL speakers make this mistake – as shown here:

And Finally, An Honourable Mention To ‘thorough & borough’…


The ‘ough’ spelling is one of the most notorious patterns in English. 

Before we get to the schwa examples, here are the other ways ‘ough’ can be pronounced:

RHYMES WITH ‘GO’: though, although

RHYMES WITH ‘CUFF’: tough, enough, rough

RHYMES WITH ‘NOW’: plough, Hough, drought

RHYMES WITH ‘SPORT’: thought

RHYMES WITH ‘TOO’: through

And finally, there are two relatively common words where the OUGH spelling simply symbolises a single, simple schwa sound:

thorough (and thoroughly), borough

Here's the word 'thorough' broken down into its 4 individual sounds:

[  TH  +  STRUT VOWEL  +  R  +  SCHWA VOWEL  ]

Listen to the final two sounds in particular.

The second syllable of both thorough and borough is simply two sounds: an R consonant followed by a SCHWA vowel:

[  R  +  SCHWA  ]

You can also find this  [  R  +  SCHWA  ]  combo at the end of words like Vera, clearer, juror and Ira.

Finally, in the word ‘Edinburgh’, the ‘gh’ is actually a symbol for the schwa!

This means the final syllable in 'Edinburgh' consists of precisely the same
[ R + SCHWA ]  combo you hear in ‘thorough’ and ‘borough’ and ‘Vera’.

What about place names like Middlesborough?

The word ‘borough’ itself has 2 syllables (therefore 2 vowels), as in: "the Bo.rough of Lambeth".

But this gets reduced when 'borough' is a suffix in place names like Middlesborough, as shown in the BOROUGH list earlier.

BO.rough (‘borough’ = 2 syllables)

Sounds a little like ‘BU-ruh’.

MI.ddles.borough (‘borough’ = 1 syllable)

Sounds a little like ‘middles-bruh’.

As always, if you’re unsure, you can check YouGlish (dictionaries don't often include place names, but might occasionally).

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