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Unstressed vowels are letters that are not easy to hear in a word. Polysyllabic words - that is, words with more than one syllable - can be tricky to spell in English. This is because English words are pronounced with more stress on some syllables than others. Unstressed syllables all sound the same - they have the vowel sound 'schwa', which looks like this: ə. The 'e' in 'carpet' sounds exactly the same as the 'a' in 'zebra'.
When spelling some words, you'll come across unstressed vowels when those words are spoken. There are many words in the English language where vowels are unstressed. How many can you think of? These words are tricky to spell purely because they sound so different.
The vowels are a, e, i, o and u. In many words, not all the vowels are stressed: this causes difficulty in spelling such words.
For example, the 'schwa' sound which causes so much difficulty with English spelling. With very few exceptions, every polysyllabic word in English is pronounced with at least one schwa sound.
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