Ann Cook mentioned in AAT that “In my observation, when people speak a foreign language, they tense up their throat, so their whole communication style sounds forced, pinched, strained, artificial, or nasal.” I’ve been thinking about these words for quite some time as I was struggling with problems like low speaking volume and un-natural intonation in daily speech. People gave me good advices such as “breathe deeply”, “speak from your diaphragm”. True, those are good techniques, but there must be more to help me understand and resolve the issue until I came across Dr. David Alan Stern’s Sound and Style of American English. I had listened to the CD set several years back and the first 20 minutes would put me to sleep. Now as I re-visit what Dr. Stern said in the first two discs, I feel that is exactly what I was looking for.
Dr. Stern is a professor of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut and used to coach Hollywood actors dialects for auditions. His approach to accent reduction starts with two factors (rather than vowels or consonants correction):
1. Pitch and rhythm characteristics of American English.
2. The way mouth muscles focus the sound or place the sound in different parts of the mouth to create the American resonance.
The second point is what I’m particularly interested in, where he explained that the placement of American English is at the back of the mouth (Ah position) and the middle tongue moves up and down to produce typical American sounds (for example the mid-tongue moves from Ah to I position to produce AI). Throat, tongue and lips need to remain relaxed during the whole process. “To created American resonance and American pronunciation, you must relax your lips and front face muscles and open mouth wider in the back and make big circle shaped movements with the middle of your tongue. Relax the muscles in the front of the mouth and feeling a wide opening in the back and let jaw float down and up as your mouth opens and closes.” (Doesn’t this sound familiar if you remember Billnet’s article?)
I’d like to share some of my thoughts and experiences from practicing voice placement and middle tongue movement.
1. Do not be afraid to keep the mouth in wide-open position for a length of time during speech while let the vocal cord continue vibrating to produce the elongated vowels / double vowels (or as Ann Cook said put the sound on different staircases). You may feel exaggerated but you will sound more American.
2. Speech rhythm is created by emphasizing stressed vowels, not by reducing un-stressed sounds. I used to pay more attention to reduced words attempting to create the American rhythm. But it’s actually the other way round; rhythm is dictated by stressed vowels.
3. Place the voice in the back of the mouth and focus on middle tongue movement will make American liaison and intonation much easier.
4. Singing helps to control mouth muscles and sound, as well as get a feeling of the American speech melody.
I was not paid to say this, but if you’re interested to know more, check out this website. Keep working and hope we all find our tune someday.
http://www.dialectaccentspecialists.com/store/index.php/page_SandS-QandA
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