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Now we return to this subject.
When a vowel occurs in an unstressed syllable in English, it often becomes REDUCED to schwa 
or the KIT vowel 
or the FOOT vowel 
.
This is shown in the following diagram.
In this diagram, the vowel chart divided into three regions: high front (the
region), high back (the
region) and non-high (the
region). When reduced, vowels in each region become
according to their position on the vowel chart.
and
become
and
. If you need reminding of this, look again at Tensing of 
and 
)In the following table, the words accept, obtain, Brighton, brighten are firstly transcribed INCORRECTLY, with STRONG vowels, and in the third column with their correct weak vowels:
accept obtain Brighton brighten
Lenin and Lennon and weak
are in contrastive (overlapping) distribution - they can differentiate between minimal pairs such as:
Lenin
Lennon except accept
and
. Unstressed structural words like 'to'
and 'you' 
are very often pronounced
and
(see weak forms). In many accents of English - in Australia, NZ and S.Africa, much of the North of England and widely in the USA and Canada - vowel reduction also turns the KIT vowel
into schwa. In these accents, 'Lenin' and 'Lennon' are homophones, and so are 'accept' and 'except':
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