Do you like languages and linguistics ? Here is for having fun about it
Share this community: [[email protected]](/c/[email protected])
Serious Linguistics community: [email protected]
Unless you speak Romanian, there the "ă" sound can be stressed and failing to do so makes a difference e.g. "cântăm" (we sing) vs "cântam" (I/we sang). As a foreigner I made this mistake and even though people will understand and even appreciate that you are trying to speak their language, it's "disturbing" to hear the wrong verbal tense.
The joke is that many, if not most, English dialects merge /ʌ/ with schwa but insist that the sounds are different because schwa is never stressed