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That upside-down-looking ə is called schwa. It is the weak vowel heard in many unstressed English syllables: the first sound in "about," for example, and the second vowel in "given." English often reduces vowels when stress moves elsewhere, so a written vowel does not always keep the full sound you might expect from its spelling.

English phonetics

LanguageScience

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The word schwa comes, through German, from the Hebrew shva, a vowel sign that marks a missing or very short vowel. The upside-down e was first used for this sound in the 1820s by the German scholar Johann Andreas Schmeller, in his work on Bavarian dialects, and the International Phonetic Alphabet later adopted it. Schwa is often described as the most common vowel sound in English, because English weakens so many unstressed vowels towards it: the 'a' in 'about', the 'e' in 'taken' and the 'o' in 'lemon' can all sound alike. Turkish does not weaken unstressed vowels in this way, which is one reason the rhythm of spoken English takes Turkish learners some practice.

Türkçe oku
Ters dönmüş bir e'ye benzeyen ə işaretinin adı şvadır (İngilizcesiyle schwa). İngilizcede vurgusuz hecelerde duyulan zayıf, belirsiz ünlüyü gösterir: “about” sözcüğünün ilk sesi ya da “given” sözcüğünün ikinci ünlüsü gibi. Vurgu başka heceye kayınca ünlüler zayıfladığı için yazılan harf her zaman beklenen sesi vermez.

Şva adı, Almanca üzerinden İbranicedeki shva işaretinden gelir; bu işaret, bir ünlünün hiç okunmadığını ya da çok kısa okunduğunu gösterir. Ters e işareti bu ses için ilk kez 1820'lerde, Alman dilbilimci Johann Andreas Schmeller'in Bavyera ağızları üzerine çalışmalarında kullanıldı; Uluslararası Fonetik Alfabe onu daha sonra benimsedi. Şva, İngilizcede en sık duyulan ünlü sayılır, çünkü İngilizce vurgusuz hecelerdeki pek çok ünlüyü bu sese doğru zayıflatır: “about” sözcüğündeki “a”, “taken”daki “e” ve “lemon”daki “o” birbirine benzer biçimde söylenebilir. Türkçe vurgusuz ünlüleri bu kadar zayıflatmaz; Türkçe konuşanların İngilizcenin konuşma ritmine alışmak için biraz çalışması gerekmesinin bir nedeni de budur.

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Science first meant simply knowledge of any kind, from Latin scientia. The narrower sense, the study of nature by observation and experiment, came later, and the word 'scientist' was coined only in 1833, by the English scholar William Whewell. Conscience comes from conscientia, 'knowing with', which could mean knowledge shared with others or knowledge held within oneself. Omniscient adds omnis, 'all', and prescient adds prae, 'before'. Nescius is simply ne-, 'not', joined to the same verb, so 'nice' began life as the opposite of 'science'. Turkish has a similar family built on its own verb for knowing, bil-: bilgi (knowledge) and bilge (wise) are old words, while bilim (science) and bilinç (consciousness) were coined during the language reform of the 1930s.

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