The most important thing about your Accent

What makes a piccolo sound different from a flute,  what makes a violin sound different from a bass?  

Knowing this will probably help you sound more  natural when you speak English if your native  

language is not English. Today we’re going to  explore how you shape your body when you speak,  

and some tweaks that you can make  to make it easier to speak English.

I was working with a student in a live class  a month or two ago and we were talking about  

how her Spanish voice should sound different  from her American voice. Now, this is true for  

any native language. It’s not just the sounds of  American English that are different from Hindi,  

Korean, Portuguese for example. It’s not just the  sounds, but the instrument itself. How Americans  

shape their body to produce American English  is different from how native speakers of other  

languages shape their bodies to speak their  language. And when I say body, really what  

I’m talking about here would be the neck, the  parts of the mouth, and all the muscles involved.

So if you speak English without changing the  shape of your body, it’s going to be harder to  

get some of the vowel sounds and some of the  reductions and rhythm of American English.

Here, I’m working with my student and  I’m imitating how she said a phrase,  

and I’m feeling the difference in my body between  her way of saying it and my way of saying it,  

to feel how I change the shape of my neck  and throat. The phrase is “I’m living”.

I’m living

It’s pretty cut and held here.  “I’m li-: and I would say,  

“I’m le-”. So I’m feeling quite a  bit more chest vibration. I’m living,  

I’m living is quite a bit more face  and nose. I’m living, I’m living.

Now I talk about where your voice vibrates as a  heat map. A heat map is “a representation of data  

in the form of a map or diagram in which data  values are represented as colors,” for example,  

this image that shows where people’s  eyes go when looking at this webpage.

So, like if I had to imagine like a heat map  of you know, where the vibration is happening,  

I would say for you in Spanish, it’s like  here. And in English, it’s like here.

Okay. So it’s bigger and deeper.

Now here I get into that piccolo analogy.  An analogy is when you compare one thing  

to another to help explain that  other thing. I’m using a piccolo,  

and qualities of a piccolo, to describe  the human voice and vocal instrument.

It’s sort of like the difference between a,  

like a piccolo and a flute. Do you  know those two musical instruments?

Flute? Yes but Piccolo no.

Piccolo is like this long, and it’s like--

It’s like super high. Right,  the instrument is smaller,  

the pitch is higher. And  a little bit more intense.

Let’s compare a piccolo to a flute.

First, a little flute, then a  little piccolo. Thank you to the  

Minnesota orchestra for sharing  these demonstrations on YouTube.

So the piccolo is the smallest instrument,  

it’s the highest instrument in the orchestra. And  it has a sharper quality than the flute. In fact,  

the player actually put in an ear plug when she  did the piccolo demonstration to protect her ears.

Let’s hear those two clips again.

So how does that relate to voice? When  you tense muscles in certain ways,  

you make the tube of your instrument smaller, and  that changes the sound, unrelated to the vowel  

sound you’re making here with your articulators.  Your tongue, your teeth and so on. Your native  

language may feel more like a piccolo, but we  want American English to feel more like a flute.

It’s sort of similar to that. It’s like when  you’re using a little bit of your instrument,  

the color of the sound is different.  And when you’re able to have a bigger  

instrument and open it up, then there’s  more color and that has sort of a rounder  

sound to it which has a little bit more of an  American feel. So, if you’re taking a word in  

English and you’re using more of a Spanish  placement and some of the Spanish sounds,  

I can see how some people at first would not  understand the word, depending on the word.

There I mentioned the word ‘placement’. We  can think of placement as being how the voice  

vibrates in the body, as it relates to the shape  of your instrument. This affects all your sounds,  

every word you speak in English, and if you  haven’t seen this video, where we talk about the  

anatomy of the voice and we compare the English  of many different non-native speakers, please

check it out. It’s probably the best video I’ve  ever made on how to truly sound natural speaking  

English. After you finish this one, of course.  I will link to that in the video description.

So how do you find more space  in your body to open up your  

instrument? Try the exercise  that I do with this student.

So, let’s just take the phrase, “I’m living  in.” Because this has quite a few ih,  

I’m living in. Ih is one of those vowels  that Spanish speakers often want to make ee,  

which is really bright and placed right here.  And so that’s an example of ee, ih, of how we  

change the sound and it changes the  placement and it goes from a tighter,  

smaller instrument to a bigger, rounder  instrument. So let’s just try that vowel.

Ih

Pretty good. I want to do what I did to Marian a  little bit which is I’m going to say, a sound and  

I’m going to take it so low that I’m not even  sure if I’m going to be able to go any lower  

and I want you to try to do it too. Let me think  of. I’m going to do the word live. Okay, live.

Live

Okay. So, what you had to do to go that low, I  felt like I saw a little bit of movement here  

which is like the base of the tongue where your  tongue is attached and maybe it was a little bit  

of dropping and opening. Live. Like to go that  low, you had to release some tension. Live. So  

what if you use that same feeling and then  you brought your pitch up but even as your  

pitch became more natural, you had that feeling  of like the dropping that you did there. So,  

let’s just do that again and this time I want  you to really think about what is physically  

changing especially for the last one, what  are you thinking to get your pitch that low?

Live

Okay. So the last one, I like the sound.  Honestly it’s got the most American quality.

And I feel more relaxed. And I  feel more relaxed when I did it.

I can feel the--

Uhmhm.

It has this like core American feel and  color to the sound that’s like yeah,  

that’s it. And obviously I don’t expect  you to speak this low. That would be  

very hard and unnatural. But, maybe  you do want to do that for like ten  

seconds every once in a while, and like I  said with Marian, maybe write out a list.

Are there things that you notice that you’re  physically doing to get that sound? And then  

have that list with you, have that  be a checklist and sort of try to go  

through those things sometimes when  you’re just speaking more regularly  

like you said I have to relax, when  you’re like, think of going that low.

Live.

And then, think in your mind, okay now,  

I’m going to say it normal, normally. Do  you feel anything tense up and get ready?

Okay now, I’m going to talk like oh wow, now  everything came back up high. I want to see if  

you can feel like your body picking up tension  to get ready to talk. And if you notice that,  

see if you be like, no, I don’t need that, I  don’t actually need that. I’ll tell you if it  

sounds weird. But this is like the difference  between your American voice and your Spanish  

voice naturally has the tension that brings it  here that has that awesome Spanish placement.  

And then your American voice, you got to  leave all that, you got to think so low and  

then it’s going to give you a rounder tone to  it. It’s like, maybe it’s worth going to uhm,  

YouTube and looking up like a Piccolo song and  hearing how bright that sound is and thinking,  

okay, that’s my Spanish voice. My English  voice is less bright. It’s more mellow.

More mellow. This is a great exercise you can  do. You don’t need my feedback for this. Take  

an English phrase, bring the pitch down  so low, as low as you can possibly go,  

and note everything your body does to produce  that sound. Open, lowering, relaxation,  

space. Then try to keep some of that in your  body as you bring your pitch back up. Also  

note American English might in general need  to have a lower pitch to sound more natural.  

So that is my exercise challenge for you. Try  to open up your instrument with relaxation.

Huge thank you to my student who volunteered  to work with me in my live class in Rachel’s  

English Academy. I give live classes there  once a month and work with a couple students,  

and I record all those lessons and they go in  the Academy. So when students sign up and join,  

they can go to this course, type in their native  language, and see all the students I’ve worked  

with in their language group. It’s a really  great resource for finding tips and tricks that  

are relevant to you in tweaking your English.  Of course there are also hundreds of training  

lessons to help students find these new parts of  the American voice that they learn about. To learn  

more, please visit RachelsEnglishAcademy.com.  And thank you so much for watching this video,  

I just love working with students on their  English speaking, helping them reach their goals,  

helping them be 100% understandable and  confident speaking English. Please subscribe  

with notifications on here on YouTube and why  not binge watch some of my videos right now  

by watching this recommended video. That’s it  and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.