Just Like a Dancer

Just Like a Dancer

Even if you are not a dancer, you can apply some tips from dancing to your speech:

• Be nimble and free … at ease, not stiff. Dancers who are stiff are not graceful. Speakers who are stiff are boring and seem tense.

• Make large movements. Dancers choreograph their moves and direction to reach out to large audiences. You can do the same with your voice. Having a strong, well-projected voice with resonance sends a more profound message and reaches more people.

• Glide, don’t jump. Just as dancers transition from one move to another, you too can move from one topic to another gracefully, not in a disruptive manner. Work on smooth connection.

• Posture matters. Dancers aren’t bent over and low energy. Speakers can’t be either. Good speakers breathe and are poised and know how to maximize their diaphragmatic support.

• Timing Matters. Dancers are aware of how much distance there is between themselves and other dances and how far they can move. Speakers need to be aware of distance too. In terms of voice travel and in terms of how long it takes them to say something and how much space they put between words and between phrases.

• Complexity. Dancing isn’t just one thing: it’s moving in time with the music, looking confident and poised, yet natural and comfortable, and moving with expert grace, necessary strength, and precision. Speaking is like that too. It’s a dance of the voice.

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Your Body is a Musical Instrument

Your Body is a Musical Instrument

Many of my clients are surprised to learn that posture and speech are inextricably linked. What could sitting up straight vs. slumping have to do with how we talk? One way to think of it is that your body is a musical instrument. The shape of the instrument changes the sound quality. If you want to be able to lower your pitch, increase your resonance, or make your voice carry better, you have to have a posture to support those qualities.

When you are working on your accent, for example, you might want to focus on “clarity” or saying the sounds “right”, but even this is related to posture. Your neck has to be in good alignment with your spine to produce the sounds you intend to make. Squeezing or compressing the sounds is very common and has to do with “trying” to get the sound right instead of “letting it happen”. The letting go or “allowing” is only possible when you are in good alignment and not squeezing to get the sounds, in other words, when you have “good posture”.

Back to the musical instrument analogy, a flute sounds different from a cello which sounds different from a guitar. People can be just as varied. Have you ever noticed someone who looks small or slim can have a “big voice” and it changes everything? Or someone tall and well dressed can have a squeaky voice, and it also impacts their performance and people’s perception of the person’s speech.

The best case scenario is to look your best and sound your best, and that’s why posture is so directly connected to speech quality.

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Should Melania Trump Speak with an American Accent?

As a Speech & Accent Coach, I often question to what extent it’s important for someone to speak with an American Accent.

For example, I wonder about Melania Trump. Those who support her are adamant that she is a multi-lingual immigrant who should be commended for her ability to speak various languages, but evidence that she speaks those languages well (French and Italian are two of them) is hard to find. Her recent video, recorded visits to schools with French and Italian children show her speaking English with a few friendly “Bonjour’s” and “Ciao’s” sprinkled in. The argument is that if she spoke those languages, she would surely do so in the company of French and Italian children.

Although it really shouldn’t matter whether she speaks French or Italian, it does matter that she speaks broken English with no visible evidence of attempting an American Accent… or should it matter?

Is it important for the First Lady to speak with an American Accent?

On the one hand, we could give her a break for being an immigrant. Her first language is Slovenian, so one might expect her to speak English with an accent.. But since she chose to marry an American (Donald Trump) and support him in becoming the President of the US, wouldn’t it make sense that as First Lady she should at least make an attempt to learn American English?

What could Melania Trump gain if she spoke with an American Accent?

She could speak up to clarify her intent. When she wears a jacket that reads on the back: “I really don’t care; do you?” when going to visit immigrant children who have been separated from their parents, it would be nice if she could speak up and explain whether it was a fashion statement with unintended consequences or intentional. If she did so with an American Accent (apologizing I would presume), we might be more inclined to give her a break.

Other immigrants could respect and be motivated by her. By speaking the way she does, she may send the message that she really doesn’t have to be polished or clear. She may send a message of entitlement, not a genuine desire to support others. Unlike Barbara Bush, the wife of the first George Bush, who had a passion for family literacy, Melania may seem more like an actor in a play than a First Lady who stands for something. If she strived to speak American English with an American Accent, it might be different. People might respect her.

History might judge her separately from her husband. Melania has publicly proclaimed that she doesn’t always agree with “The Donald”. However, the more time that passes and more history we have with her husband’s leadership abilities (or lack thereof), it would be refreshing and pleasant if the First Lady could at least “weigh in” with some evidence of independent thought as a woman and human being. She mentioned wanting to work against cyber-bullying, but she hasn’t been a strong force in actively taking it on as her issue of choice. Michelle Obama did a beautiful job of speaking up without being distracting, and partisanism aside (this is not a political article), if Melania spoke up with an American Accent, she could make a statement as an independent immigrant woman that people could evaluate for her own merits, instead of someone who is “just along for the ride” on the coattails of her hubbie.

If you would like to work on your American Accent, you may need to hire a Speech & Accent Coach! You never know when you will get your “big break” to speak up in the public arena, and it might be a good idea to get prepared for that day early on!

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Breath on Air Flow Sounds

Breath on Air Flow Sounds

Most Asians don’t use enough breath on “air flow” sounds in English. Which sounds are these? They are the sounds that sound “breathy” a bit when native speakers talk. Have you ever noticed which sound lasts longer?

The voiceless ones like:

• Ffffeeling ffffanssssy (feeling fancy)
• Fffffirsssst thththththingssssss ffffirsssst (first things first)
• Fffffocusssss on the pozzzzzitivvvve (focus on the positive)
• Ssssomeththththing sssspeshshshshial (something special)

Notice which sounds are longer in conversation, and practice deliberately releasing air specifically on those sounds. You will notice your speech increases in voice time and sounds more pleasurable to listeners. This will make your speech sounds more measured (less rushed) and the timing will be better. The intonation will be easier to control with breath.

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The Complexity of Indian Accents in American English

The Complexity of Indian Accents in American English

Not every person from India has a similar compliment, so what’s essential to consider while recognizing what to concentrate on to make clear discourse?

 Here are a few things to consider:

1. A few people from India are English-medium educated. Some are definitely not.

What’s the distinction? A few people in India talk their first dialects in school to learn math, science, and numerous different subjects. They additionally take an English class. That might be the main presentation the individual needs to English. So while they know some English, understudies who are not English-medium educated, don’t talk it day by day. This is altogether different from somebody who is English-medium educated. This implies the individual took in English from an extremely youthful age and took the greater part of their subjects in English … BIG DIFFERENCE! A decent thing to ask somebody from India is “Would you say you were English-medium-educated and assuming this is the case, from what age?”

2. Many individuals from India talk with tense enunciation, which may influence their discourse to sound quick.

On the off chance that you consider that a great many people from India have had more presentation to British English, this bodes well. On the off chance that you consolidate British verbalization with a portion of the explanation designs found in a significant number of the Indian dialects, you’ll see that none of these dialects jaw-drop the way American do, so no big surprise their discourse is going at a quick clasp! Discourse from a strained jaw is speedier than discourse made while dropping the jaw (it just takes more time to jaw drop).

3. Complexity and Variety

On the off chance that you tally every one of them (major and other), there are more than 1700 dialects in India. Not amazing, at that point, that there is some assortment of discourse designs. I find southern Indian dialect speakers have the absolute most difficult issues when endeavoring to make an American/r/(contrasted with speakers of other Indian dialects). As opposed to what we may think, not every person from India communicates in Hindi; a few people who communicate in Telugu or Tamil don’t communicate in Hindi much, if by any means. I additionally see a propensity among the individuals who talk southern Indian dialects (like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada or Malayalam) to battle more with word worry in English. Contrasted with northerners/north-westerners who communicate in Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, or Hindi, they have a tendency to have more trouble knowing which syllable to stress and afterward having the capacity to lengthen that syllable dependably. Obviously, it’s more confounded than that. There are those from different parts of India, similar to the eastern locales, who communicate in Oriya and Bengali, and experience difficulty recognizing/s/and/sh/and/ch/and/j/, for instance. Add to the greater part of that intricacy that many individuals from India talk various Indian dialects or have been uncovered at an early age to relatives who do, so they may talk with an assortment of attributes from various impacts.

4. What to do about it?

On the off chance that somebody from India is having challenges speaking American English obviously at an agreeable pace, they may need to acclimate themselves to the vowels Americans utilize … they might utilize British vowels or some mix of vowels from their first dialects and British vowels, and they don’t know about the vowel substitutions. They may likewise talk at a quicker pace than American gatherings of people are utilized to, and they may not delay and inhale as they go. They may have a lot of issues with the/w/and/v/sound refinements, and their/the/sounds make seem like/t/’s. Their/t/sounds may have minimal bouncy/poppy qualities and they might utilize an alternate piece of their tongues to make the sounds. They may likewise be throaty speakers. What’s more, for southern dialects specifically, word stretch examples in American English and how to push syllables by prolonging them is critical to coherence.

With some top to the bottom investigation into particularly what Indian first-dialect speakers are doing another way and what they may discover testing, it’s conceivable to pinpoint what to chip away at to enable them to speak with lucidity in American English.

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