8

USEFUL STUFF

 

 

IN THIS CHAPTER

As we said in Get Professional, being good at an accent takes practice. In this chapter we have included the following practice material to help you get the basics right:

	The Kit List (page 223)
	Practice Sentences (page 223)
	Arthur the Rat (page 225)

On our website, www.howtodoaccents.com, you will also find marked up copies of Arthur the Rat, written phrase by phrase, to help you practise some of the Major Issues in Consonant Clusters:

	Dropped ‘Hs’
	Crunches
	Nasal and Lateral Plosions
	Glottal Stops
	‘YOOs’

Having a basic understanding of your vocal equipment can really help. For this reason we have included:

Knowing Your Equipment (page 226)

And for further reading please refer to our:

	Bibliography (page 232)
	Recommended Reading (page 232)

Finally, there is the essential list of MP3 tracks that accompany this book!

MP3 Track List

For more Useful Stuff including practice speeches, videos, articles, and information on forthcoming workshops and publications go to www.howtodoaccents.com

NB. The all-important You and the New Chart filled in for a NSEA can also be found at www.howtodoaccents.com. Why not print this off and fill in your own accent details in the YOU section? An adapted and expanded version of Professor Wells’ sets can be found on the How to Do Accents website, at www.howtodoaccents.com.

THE KIT LIST

For those of you who work with the International Phonetic Alphabet we have included the closest symbol to represent this sound.

KIT	I
DRESS	e
STRUT	∧
FOOT	Ʊ
GOOSE	u:
FLEECE	i:
NURSE	3:
TRAP	а
BATH	ɑ:
PALM	ɑ:
START	ɑ:
LOT	ɒ
CLOTH	ɒ
THOUGHT	ɔ:
NORTH	ɔ:
FORCE	ɔ:
FACE	ei
GOAT	ɘƱ
PRICE	аi
CHOICE	ɔi
MOUTH	аƱ
NEAR	ɪǝ
SQUARE	e˙(eǝ)
TOUR	ɔ:

PRACTICE SENTENCES

• KIT The ship listed as busy women built a pretty bridge in the dim mid-winter.
• DRESS In a sweat, Jeff edged his head into the Thames in an effort to save his best friend from the treacherous bell of death.
• STRUT The dull young monks rushed in a flood to hunt the buds of the lovely buttercup.
• FOOT The woman shouldn’t put the full pudding onto the butcher’s hook.
• GOOSE Two beautiful youths moved through a few smooth, juicy, rude grooves in feudal confusion.
• FLEECE The police had reason to believe that Peter, Keith and the anaemic Sheila could be in league to illegally deceive people.
• NURSE Pearl urged Myrtle’s attorney to rehearse a certain circus turn before the courteous worm turned.
• TRAP The cat dashed to catch the ham that dangled from the bag.
• BATH ‘Francis the calf can’t dance’, laughed Sandra the giraffe, aghast, as the calf pranced disastrously.
• PALM Brahms’ sonata kept father calm in the spa.
• START Sergeant Charles was the star of the party with his hearty aria.
• LOT Tom honestly acknowledged how top-notch the swan was to dodge the yacht.
• CLOTH Ross often frothed the coffee and washed the long sausages in Boston.
• THOUGHT Paul applauded all the naughty daughters who yawned when taught with chalk and talk.
• NORTH George cavorted with Thor to fortify his short torso for the war in York.
• FORCE ‘Of course I adore Nora’, roared the porter through the door to the four divorced boarders.
• FACE April felt faint as she campaigned to rein in the wasteful ladies to change their ways and obey.
• GOAT Joan coaxed her beau, Owen, to grow bolder, though she loathed over-controlling soldiers.
• PRICE Friday is the right night to arrive by bicycle in Cyprus to buy a fine eiderdown.
• CHOICE The boy employed a joist to hoist the moist oysters into the boiling oil.
• MOUTH The loud crowd from south of the county wanted to oust the clown out of town, but they were all mouth.
• NEAR Maria was sincere in her weird career, but feared the fierce bearded cashier.
• SQUARE Where the pears are scarce, the bears share theirs fairly.
• TOUR Muriel assured the poor tourists that the insurance was sure to cover Europe.

SET TEXT: ARTHUR THE RAT

There was once a young rat named Arthur, who could never take the trouble to make up his mind. Whenever his friends asked him if he would like to go out with them, he would only answer, ‘I don’t know.’ He wouldn’t say ‘yes’ and he wouldn’t say ‘no’ either. He could never learn to make a choice.

His aunt Helen said to him, ‘No one will ever care for you if you carry on like this. You have no more mind than a blade of grass.’ Arthur looked wise, but stupidly said nothing.

One rainy day, the rats heard a great noise in the loft where they lived. The pine rafters were all rotten in the middle, and at last one of the joists had given way and fallen to the ground. The walls shook and all the rats’ hair stood on end with fear and horror. ‘This won’t do,’ said the old rat who was chief, ‘I’ll send out scouts to search for a new home.’

Three hours later the seven tired scouts came back and said, ‘We have found a stone house, which is just what we wanted; there is room and good food for us all. There is a kindly horse named Nelly, a cow, a calf, and a garden with flowers and an elm tree.’ Just then the old rat caught sight of young Arthur. ‘Are you coming with us?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know,’ Arthur sighed. ‘The roof may not come down just yet.’ ‘Well,’ said the old rat angrily, ‘we can’t wait all day for you to make up your mind. Right about face! March!’ And they went straight off.

Arthur stood and watched the other little rats hurry away. The idea of an immediate decision was too much for him. ‘I’m going back to my hole for a bit,’ he said to himself dreamily, ‘just to make up my mind.’ That Tuesday night there was a great crash that shook the earth and down came the whole roof. Next day some men rode up and looked at the ruins. One of them moved a board and hidden under it they saw a young rat lying on his side, quite dead, half in and half out of his hole.

KNOWING YOUR EQUIPMENT

You will need a mirror so you can see what we are talking about!

The non-movable or passive articulators are the ones you’re just stuck with (unless you have surgery…). Using your tongue, explore the passive articulators and connect what you feel to the diagram.

It is the passive articulators that provide the structures against which the active articulators play. The active articulators are the ones that do all the work.

Using the mirror, explore your active articulators:

1 LIPS and CHEEKS:

The muscles of the lips and cheeks are interconnected.

Your lips have one principal muscle called the orbicularis oris. This muscle divides into inner and outer sphincter actions. When you use the outer sphincter your lips can round like this:

and when you use the inner sphincter they round like this:

Some accents prefer one of these actions above another. Some like to make a proper circle, using a lot of rounding, while some use almost no rounding at all. Your cheeks have three principal muscle groups which pull the mouth in various directions:

• sideways into smiles, grins, etc.
• downwards into a grimace
• upwards into sneers

Try making these faces to see and feel these muscles at work. One or other of these muscles may be habitually loose or tight, active or passive in an accent.

2 JAW:

The lower jaw is attached to the upper jaw by muscle and ligament. To find this muscle, clench your teeth as if you are biting something with your back teeth. As you do this, put your fingers on your cheeks, just in front of your ears. You will feel the jaw muscle (the masseter) bunching. Try to picture how much space you have between your top and bottom teeth at the back as you sit at rest. The larger the space (without pulling), the looser the muscle. The jaw muscle holds different degrees of tension and looseness in different individuals and different accents.

3 TONGUE:

The tongue is a surprisingly large organ. It is probably bigger than you think. It often surprises people that the entire body of muscle, right down to the underside of the chin, is in fact your tongue. Feel under your chin with your thumb while you push your tongue up against the roof of your mouth. What you feel pushing down against your thumb is your tongue! Look at your tongue in the mirror. It’s a bit like a separate creature living in your mouth. In fact, it is probably the most flexible and sensitive muscle in the human body. Look in the mirror to see the different sections of your tongue. To begin with, notice that your tongue divides into two main sections: a ‘free’ section and an ‘attached’ section. Look under the tongue and you will see the bit where it attaches to the jaw. This free section is the most flexible bit and is sub-divided into the Tip and the Blade. This tends to be the bit of the tongue we are most aware of. The attached section is the bit you probably overlook. This part of the tongue is sub-divided into the Front, Centre, Back and Root. The tongue will have areas of tension and looseness developed through the habitual movements of the language and accent it makes.

4 SOFT PALATE:

If the front of your tongue is super-flexible, you can feel your way back along the roof of your mouth, curling your tongue back on itself until you feel a ridge. That is the end of the hard palate and the beginning of the soft palate. Get a mirror, and look at the little punch bag that dangles in the back of your mouth (you’ll need to get the light in the right place to see inside). That’s your Uvula. It hangs from the very end of the soft palate. (You can stun someone at a party with that piece of information!) The job of the soft palate is to direct the breath or voice into either the nose or the mouth. In some accents, such as Manchester and Essex, the soft palate is held low, giving the sound a lot of ‘nasal spill’; in some, such as West Ireland and North Yorkshire it is high, creating a more oral sound; while in others, such as a NSEA, it has to bounce gymnastically up and down. Look again at the picture on page 226 and you will see how it can open or close the passage to the nose. So you can see that having a flexible soft palate is essential in order to do accents.

• To see the soft palate lift up and close the passageway to your nose, make a yawn while keeping your tongue flat and forward in your mouth. You’ll see the little punch bag shoot up and disappear. Make an ‘AH’ as you do this and feel the sound resonating in the mouth.
• To see it drop down and close the passageway to your mouth, open your mouth and say ‘NG’, the sound from the end of the word sing. You will see the back of the tongue and the soft palate come together and feel the sound resonating in the nose.
• To feel it bounce switch from the closed ‘NG’ to the yawned ‘AH’ in one action. If your soft palate is a bit sluggish, the ‘AH’ will end up in your nose! See if you can switch the direction of sound from your nose to your mouth. You may need to give it a bit of exercise to tone up that muscle!

So those are your articulators. But of course, they only form speech when they have something to play with, and that’s where your voice box comes in…

5 VOICE BOX:

As the air leaves your lungs it passes through a piece of equipment called your voice box (also called the larynx). This ‘box’ contains two folds of flesh (vocal folds) that can either stay open to let air pass through unimpeded, or come together so that the outgoing air produces vibrations as it moves through them. You can see the voice box in the front of your neck. It’s what a lot of us call the ‘Adam’s Apple’. Put your fingers on your neck and swallow and you will feel it bounce up and down. Men’s voice boxes are generally larger than women’s and consequently they make lower notes.

To feel your voice vibrations ‘switching on and off’ try the following:

• Make a long ‘V’ and, without stopping the air flow, change it to an ‘F’. You will feel the voice switch off.
• Reverse this: start with an ‘F’ and change it to a ‘V’. You will feel the voice switch on.
• On one breath change from ‘F’ to ‘V’ a number of times. You will feel the voice switching on and off as the folds come together then apart, together, then apart.

You can do the same thing with an ‘S’ and ‘Z’ too. If you feel your face, neck and chest as you make voice vibrations you can feel the vibrations resonating. Speech sounds are made with both breath and voice vibrations. (You will often see this distinction described as ‘voiced’ and ‘voiceless’; see pages 114-117.) Your articulators play with the air and vibrations in your mouth, holding them, diverting them, and shaping them to create the specific speech sounds of your language and accent.

So that’s your bits!

Of course, the really clever thing is the way we move them about and bring them together. Make an ‘FF’ sound and you’ll feel your top teeth contact your bottom lip. Add voice vibrations to this shape and the sound changes to a ‘V’. Make a ‘K’ and you’re feeling the back of the tongue lift up to contact the soft palate. Add voice vibrations and you’re making a ‘G’.

With all these moving parts, awareness and flexibility are the key. If you want to improve your basic voice use then it may help to invest in a good voice book such as Finding Your Voice by Barbara Houseman, or The Voice Book by Michael McCallion. (See Bibliography and Other Recommended Reading, page 232.)