Sound drill: the schwa (mute e)

Unité PO-08 · campagne 5 · le petit e.

The light e of le, petit and demain — the reduced vowel called the schwa — is the most common sound in French, and promoting it to a full Russian vowel is one of the fastest ways to mark an accent. Keep it short and rounded, and drop it where French speakers drop it, as in p'tit: leaving it out in the right places sounds more native, not less. The sentence below is a schwa obstacle course — record it and treat every weak e on its own.

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