I'll admit this wasn't the topic I was originally going to discuss today. I posted a "Floodgates Open" video (I'll define this in a bit) yesterday. My husband mentioned that he had never heard me use so many spacers (like,…
If you've ever done any form of dance you already understand isolation. That is exploring the movement and function of an area, a muscle or muscle groups, a joint. You can do this on a meta level such as articulating…
I live and work in Boston. Which means I live and work with non-rhocity. That is fancy-speech for under-pronounced or completely absent /r/ sounds in speaking. I'm not talking about the typical Southie accent either, I mean people who are…
Mumbling is defined as speaking in a quiet or indistinct way. In practice, it is a little more complex but the end result is the same. We cannot understand what is being said. Mumbling can be constant, or situational. For…
A morning commute in Boston can make one lose all faith in Humanity. From the careless bumping of bodies on the T to the wanton disregard for the other humans moving through space, it can make you a wee bit…
I can sometimes be guilty of thinking of articulation only as it applies to individual sounds, and over conversational phrases. It is an effective method for making certain that clarity exists in diction. However, it ignores the very musical qualities…
I talk about individual components of articulation a lot. Making sure the vowels are centered and the consonants present and complete. Addressing cadence, melody, and meaning in Voicing to make sure phrases have Purpose. Still, I haven't written enough about…
Sometimes in our effort to sound competent or even better extraordinary, we craft language that is decorated to extremes. This doesn't usually serve our purpose and more often than not leaves the audience with no actual clue of what you…
Sibilance is the hissing, sticky sound of fricative consonants such as /s/ /z/ /dʒ/ and /sh/. They can be problematic if they become too sticky and affect adjacent sounds, but I love them. They embrace the flow of air in…
Back of the tongue that is. The tongue is a large and dynamic muscle which is capable of a lovely array of sounds. Interesting for me is how we as American English speakers neglect some of the juicy variations made…