Memorable Schwa Sets:

#12 'The Fastest Way To Weightlessness'

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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lazy schwa words

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

We pronounce the highlighted spelling patterns with a lazy schwa vowel in all of the word examples below, and in all contexts – even if a speaker wants to heavily emphasise the word.

-est* fastest, quickest, smallest, biggest

-less weightless, useless, speechless, expressionless, careless, helpless, fearless

-ness openness, happiness, kindness, laziness, sharpness, weakness

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*Small note on -est: some speakers make -est words like ‘quickest’ rhyme with ‘list’. This variation is subtle, and is still considered a Standard British English pronunciation:

The main mistake non-natives make is they say -est words in a way that rhymes with ‘nest’. Native speakers don’t do this. Doing so creates a much more obvious change in rhythm and pronunciation:

lazy schwa sentences:

He was fearless, but his biggest problem was his lack of openness.

The quickest way to make me speechless is to point out my biggest weakness.

exception words:

Exceptions to ‘est’ are quite common, but notice that all the lazy schwa examples above are superlative adjectives (i.e. ‘the biggest’ means ‘nothing is bigger’ – same for the fastest, the strongest, etc).

These are consistently lazy.

But there are plenty of exceptions where ‘est’ does not take a lazy schwa vowel:

-est suggest, invest, detest, ingest, infest, request, arrest, manifest, conquest, harvest

Finally, I’ve so far found no exceptions to the -ness and -less patterns.

exception sentences:

He suggested I only invest small amounts at first – it’s not a contest, after all.