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Posts Tagged ‘pronounced’

Don’t Cha – Fast Speech and Word Reductions Denote Levels of Politeness

Friday, July 27th, 2012

Can Fast Speech and Word Reductions Denote Levels of Politeness?

Although language superstitions may often mislead people into believing that fast speech rules such as /h/ reductions are in fact incorrect ways of speaking, there are some reductions that are context dependent. These reductions can denote different levels of politeness. One such example is ‘you’ reductions. While we teach our clients how to achieve palatalization such as ‘didn’t chu’ or ‘would ju’ over word boundaries to improve rhythm, we do not recommend reducing the ‘you’ pronoun into ‘ya’. Sometimes in informal situations, native speakers of English may reduce the ‘you’ to sound like ‘ya’. Awareness of this reduction has made its way into popular culture. Pop songs titled “Don’t Cha” and “Hey Ya” have infiltrated the airwaves in the past few years. ‘You’ is frequently shortened to ‘ya’ in text messages and ‘y’all’ has made a surprising comeback in informal conversations.

The descriptive approach will tell us that there is no such thing as “wrong” or “improper” language. While this may be true, we should also remember that language follows many politeness rules that determine the appropriateness of certain styles in particular situations. Be aware that reducing ‘you’ to ‘ya’ should be confined to informal situations, because it is a term of address that denotes much less respect than the regular pronoun. When in doubt, it’s best not to reduce ‘you’, and in professional relationships it is definitely not advised. Reductions certainly have an important place in the English language. It can help us achieve clarity and rhythm, but it is important to be aware of the subtle nuances in meaning and politeness that our choices in words and reductions may denote.

Tags: accent reduction, cross-cultural, discrimination, English, Jeff Madigan, Language Superstitions, mispronouncing, mother tongue, pronounced, pronucation, pronunciation, pronunciation training
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Language Superstitions

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

“Wear a touque. 90% of your body heat gets released through your head.”

This is something my mother always told me, and I never questioned it. But recently, I found out that it has no scientific claim whatsoever. I asked a few friends, and they also thought it was true. There are some things that we grow up thinking as true, and rules about language are no exception.

Language Superstitions

Were you ever told that saying, “Me and Bill went fishing.” is wrong? That we should say, “Bill and I went fishing.”

With English usage, there is the prescriptive approach, which tells us the way we should use language, and the descriptive approach, which tells us how people really use the language. Accent reduction requires a mixture of these two extremes.

The rules for Fast Speech, Chapter 3 in our Speak Clearer course book, explain how certain sounds are reduced in order to keep the correct rhythm and flow of spoken English. For instance, it is quite observable, that in spoken English, we often drop the /h/ sound on pronouns.

Examples of H Reductions:

I saw her there = I saw ‘er there

What did he do? = Wha did ‘e do?

I saw his letter. = I saw ‘is letter.

One of the problems our clients face when they explain these fast speech rules to their English speaking friends is that those rules are wrong. Unfortunately, many of us grow up learning about these language superstitions and fast speech rules are often confused by prescriptivists as being colloquialisms. Many a great writer of literature use colloquial speech to add depth to their characters.

Examples of Colloquialisms from Classic Literature

“Who is your folks?” = Who are your parents? (Huckleberry Finn)

“What yawl mean?” = What do all of you mean? (The Sound and the Fury)

“He is dirty thief.” = He’s a dirty thief. (Call of the Wild)

The trouble with colloquial speech is that often times they are used to depict a character as being uneducated, like in the above examples, and so many people develop the superstition that using any reductions will make you too sound poorly educated. It’s just not true.

“You don’t go back to doin sumthin that didn’t work.” – Barack Obama

Tags: accent reduction, cross-cultural, discrimination, English, English accent, Jeff Madigan, Language Superstitions, mispronouncing, mother tongue, pronounced, pronucation, pronunciation, pronunciation training
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The Consonant with a Dual Personality

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

Happy Face - Accent Reduction Tools

When we first learn the English alphabet, we are taught that there is only one /n/. While this may be true of our written language, there are in fact two very important and different ways in which /n/ can be pronounced in spoken English. The first [n] is what often comes to mind as the regular [n], such as the [n] in the words “nice”, “never” and “knowledge”. This [n] is a short and sweet sound that temporarily directs air through your nose before the next sound quickly redirects it back into your oral cavity.

The second and perhaps more obscure pronunciation of the /n/ consonant is called the syllabic [n]. The syllabic [n] is very important in the production of the North American English accent and it is characterized by an elongated direction of air through the nose. In other terms, the syllabic [n] is simply held for longer than the regular [n]. It is very easy to identify the syllabic [n], because it appears every time the [n] is the last sound in a word. For example, common words such as “phone”, “mean” and “button” all contain the syllabic [n].

The bolded words in the following sentences contain the syllabic [n]. Practice reading these out loud and remember to hold any [n] that is the last sound of a word. Can you distinguish between the two different types of [n] sounds?

1. Transportation - The bus is an efficient source of transportation.

2. Phone - Pick up the phone!

3. Earn - How are we going to earn money?

4. Complain - He came to complain about an employee.

5. Croon - The singer continued to croon well into the night.

Tags: accent, accent reduction, accent reduction training, Canadian Accent, English accent, English as a Second Language, foreign accents, Jeff Madigan, mispronouncing, north american english accent, online learning, pronounced, pronucation, pronunciation training
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Writing Skills Workshop By L2 Accent Trainer Jeff Madigan

Friday, March 16th, 2012

From the feedback given by attendees at some of our accent reduction workshops, we realized that there was also a demand for writing skills improvement. On March 7, 2012, instructor Jeff Madigan conducted a new workshop at S.U.C.C.E.S.S. for writing skills. L2 Accent Reduction has clients for both speaking and writing. Some professionals feel that their writing just has too many errors for the level of work that they are doing. Jeff recognized that some aspects of writing are not very well dealt with at very high levels in your typical grammar text book. Wednesday’s workshop focused specifically on preposition usage. Prepositions are especially problematic. They occur in phrasal verbs, such as kick out, in set combinations with nouns (on TV), adjectives (free of) and verbs (believe in), and in adverbial phrases. While the first two can be memorized, it is rare to find a grammar book that outlines using prepositions adverbially. The workshop went over these usage systems and simplified aspects out of linguistics text books into a succinct form for attendees to grasp. The workshop reviews were positive so expect to see more of these in the future.