multilingual punsters eh?

Not necessarilly. I said "language majors", not "foreign language majors". I learned about schwas and such as an English major and English is a language. I assume a phonetics class is part of foreign language majors' degree programs as well.

Phonetics is about sounds, not meanings. A schwa is a schwa, a glottal stop is a glottal stop, and a bilabial fricative is a bilabial fricative, no matter whether you're speaking English, Dutch, or Swahili.