If there’s one phonetic symbol Americans are mostly likely to know it’s the “schwa” /ə/ or “upside down e” for the “uh” sound. I personally remember from elementary school. Here it is in multiple fonts
Sound
In phonetics this is the sound similar to “uh” in American English. In many dialects of English, vowels of unstressed syllables are commonly pronounced as schwa and is one reason for spelling difficulties (e.g. is it -ible or -able both of which are really [əbəl]) It’s a common “neutral” or “resting” vowel found in many languages including French, Welsh, Irish and others.
Origin of Glyph
Schwa is close to Spanish “e” (and closer to French “e” of le), so that’s why the Letter E got flipped in this case.
Origin of Name
The word “schwa” is from the Hebrew word שְׁוָא (šěwā’, /ʃəˈwa/), meaning “nought”—it originally referred to one of the niqqud vowel points used with the Hebrew alphabet, which looks like a vertical pair of dots under a letter. This sign has two uses: one to indicate the schwa vowel-sound
–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa#The_term (19 Feb 2007)
