Music 101: The Key To Pronunciation And Accent Reduction
“Without music life would be a mistake”
These are the words of the famous German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, and Reduction as a specialist in pronunciation and accent for those who do not speak English, I can testify Regarding this the English language. English is a musical language, like Italian, Chinese, Portuguese and other languages. The trick to speaking English with clarity and impact, is the understanding of melody and rhythm that is specific to English, but differs in other languages. Therefore, without the music of the English language, the pronunciation is a mistake.
If English is a group of two, was done by a drum and a saxophone. Firstly, English is a language more like a swinging jazz or a rock band from a classical orchestra. English sounds are big, strong and insistent, and our melody is bold and worthy of the dance.
I have heard complaints from my students time and again that they always asked to repeat themselves, and even if they do, the audience still difficult to understand. Where did it come from? There are three major components that accent sounds stressed (consonants and vowels), Rhythm (and hyphenated words), and intonation (the rise and fall of tone in a sentence).
Take for example, a person whose mother tongue is Russian. When my former student, Raisa, said that the word “coffee”, they “sound Kofi pronounced with a short” O “as in the word” Coke. “There are two things to keep the listener from processing the word she is trying to say. The first is the length of the vowel, the vowels in Italian, we as a half note stressed conservation, instead of a quarter note, for example. The second problem is the articulation the vowel. Russians tend to have a close inhibits the jaw when speaking, the correct pronunciation of the English open-vowel sounds in words like “coffee”, “politics” and “options”. In a modern pop song, most of the emotions comes in the singing of vowels. Think of Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, famous for stretching the notes. The same is true in English. We create impact and emotion in our voice. Not only is it necessary for the good of correct articulation, but also one point for the use of powerful speakers.
In the case of rhythm, I will use, Luc, a former French student as an example. Most of his presentations and conversations seemed unmoved and unclear. In the language of French, should get every syllable and word in a sentence of equal weight. In contrast, in English not only stress certain syllables, but we stress certain words. Normally, we stress nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and question words (content words), and we emphasize, de-articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and “be” verbs (words of the structure). This allows you to skip some words to avoid the receiver a stream of words falling together. Thus, the implementation of rhythm, Luc went from a sleeper to a crowd favorite.
Last but not least, we have the component of the pitch. The overall tone is the melody of a song or a phrase. It allows the listener to determine the mood and intent of the sentence. For example, Sylvia was an Italian student of mine who always left a rising intonation at the end of their sentence. This made Sylvia look nervous, because their statements were delivered as questions. Sylvia biggest challenge was overcoming working in a male dominant industry speaking English. Then helped her control her intonation patterns was a first step towards creating a better clarity and a positive perception in the workplace. This is just one example of how nutrition can influence the intonation of speech. As in music, the most dramatic transition from high to low tone, the more intense the delivery of a thought. This can not only be used for reasons of clarity, but also to the persuasiveness and emphasis. Intonation sets the tone, it is extremely important for a non-native English, intonation patterns of English to understand.
So if you are an individual who does not speak English and ask to repeat tired, you can always turn up the stereo and sing your heart for your favorite American artists, or if you are worried your neighbors think, SOME Accent reduction classes with an expert!
Tags: accent, accent reduction, english as a second language, ESL, public speaking