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Regarding stressed "a" and "the" in USA English, I don't understand the question. Stress refers to syllables, and "a" and "the" being one-syllable words can't help but be stressed. Regarding schwa, I have rewritten USA English without schwa. Schwa stands for a variety of sounds already covered in the USA English foenubet (foenubet is my term for the set of phonemes of a language- see Truespel Book One below). I've made a listing of the frequency of use of phonemes for USA English both as present in the truespel dictionary and in common speech (appearance in a newspaper). Common speech accounts for frequency of use of some words more than others. I wonder if there are any other USA English phoneme frequency listings that I can compare to. Tom Zurinskas Truespel Book One: Analysis of the Sounds (Phonemes) of USA English http://www.1stbooks.com/cgi-bin/1st?partner~1st|type~6|Data1~16593 Convert English to truespel (USA accent) by copy/pasting at http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm Truespel is the world’s first pronunciation guide spelling system (uses letters of the keyboard only with stress indicated). See truespel.com. Write [log in to unmask] >From: Ricardo Paderni <[log in to unmask]> >Reply-To: Ricardo Paderni <[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: "the' in stressed position >Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 16:11:20 -0300 > >Recently I've heard on an American TV programme the pronunciation of "the" >as [D@] in what was clearly a stressed position. I was wondering if this is >something characteristic of American pronunciation or if it's also found in >other accents in Britain such as RP, and how well accepted this is. And one >more thing, is the pronunciation of the indefinite article with [@] gaining >ground in stressed position as well? Thanks > >Ricardo Paderni _________________________________________________________________ Send instant messages to anyone on your contact list with MSN Messenger 6.0. Try it now FREE! http://msnmessenger-download.com