STOP THAT "T"!
My humble quest to eliminate the exploded final /t/ sound from the general American accent. Additional questing at http://www.thedialectcoach.com, click "News".
I have this mental image of your listeners practicing your tips as they go about their daily lives. I am imagining comical reactions from observers. In Michigan we use what I call the "catfight A". ( Say "Colorado". Does the A remind you of a catfight or going to the dentist?) Perhaps on a future show I might learn the proper title for those sounds.
Jim Barfuss
http://www.publicradioquest.com/user/2824
“Life is full of surprises. When I looked toward the future in my youth, I did not see myself standing here.” Seymour B. Moore
Don't you commenters realize that if you get rid of those local idiosyncratic accents you may do dialectcoach out of a job? I love trying to pin down accents. Tony Blankley drives me crazy. I swear he's got London, Australia, and Boston in there. Listening to my own audition piece for this competition, I realize that I've gone overboard getting rid of my flat Baltimore "o" and now my "o"s sound like they rolled in from the Dakotas. Oh well. Anyway, I'd like to hear more. dme
When I was living in Utah, it would BUG me to no end when I heard the T sound where no Ts existed. Words like "Fancy" and "Kelsey" became "Fant-cy" and "Kelt-sey"! Please help.
Well, Joedesigner, I cain't say as I know that one, but I feel your pain, and will get my crack research team right on it, if I can ever get them off of the crack (ha ha). And thanks for listening.
Did you ever hear of an "intrusive /r/", though? It's the /r/ that you hear in some accents when a word ends in an "uh" or "ah" sound and the next word starts with a vowel, as in: "The idear of it." I believe it only happens in accents where /r/ gets dropped after a vowel sound, like English and Australian, and you'll hear it in some New York and Boston acccents as well: "We went for pizzar and beer after the game."
This is a glide that actually makes it easier to go from a final vowel in one word to an initial vowel in the next: it's a wonder we haven't retained it in a general American accent, as we're always looking for the easiest way to speak!
fooling around with this for the next few days... that's for sure. Darn it!
Steve
It falls to the enlightened, and the intelligent and the sane to take responsibility for the deluded or doltish or insane.
Joel is a Master of pointing out what can and should be done with a great style of doing it. Impressive in 2 minutes or 30 – You learn something and want to try it out.
We public radio listeners love language and all its soothing and grating sounds, and also have an urgent, sometimes obsessive, interest in evaluating and disecting our own habits. I see it now: rush hour traffic, each car's driver can be seen mouthing and remouthing and overmouthing sounds in an interractive exercise while listening to Joel Goldes' musings. Sign me up!
Vanja T.
And informative to boot! I'm very interested in dialect and speech, this was a cool little rant!
Good luck to you!
Be Baffled By Bafflegab!-->
www.publicradioquest.com/node/1319
"All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy" - Spike Milligan
Once again a very clear, informative, inviting and humorous lesson from the best dialect coach in the country today! Thanks again Joel. 5 stars.
Rich.
It did touch upon of what you taught me during our sessions!I thought it was very helpful and good luck at winning the contest!
Garen
I enjoyed your segment! It was very engaging and made me more conscious of my own speech, so you did your job well. I liked the vivid way you described how or not to pop your T's. It was easy to understand exactly what you meant. Great job!
Thanks a lot! It's funny how we're not aware of something till someone points it out: Samuel Beckett said "...habit is a great deadener". But by becoming aware of a habit we can learn to change that behavior, change the way we speak and change the way the world perceives us. And all it takes is a little attention.
Best,
Joel
As if I didn't have enough already...
:-)
Hear my entry (and judge my "T's"):
No, thanks for listening, David, And don't worry, your /t/ sounds are just fine: in fact, your piece contains several examples of the stopped /t/: the phrases "but nobody," "out for" and "right wing" all contain stopped /t/ sounds followed by words that start with consonants. These are very typical in many American accents.
You also demonstrate a /t/ sound that should pop: the one preceded by another consonant sound, in the word "next." And you take the option of popping /t/sounds when they're preceded by a spelled "n" or "t," as in "want to know" and "heart."
All right, so I might quibble with the exploded /t/ in the word "hate", but the bottom line is that you sound like a real person expressing himself, and isn't that why we're all here?
Best,
Joel Goldes
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