SOFT PALATE EXERCISES (6 of 6) -- Vocal Exercises -- American English Pronunciation

As part of our series

on relaxation and placement,

this video talks about the soft palate.

An overall nasal sound can be caused

either by tension in the throat,

or by a lowered soft palate.

When the soft palate is lowered,

it allows some air to come through here,

into the nasal cavity.

That makes the voice live

more in the face than in the body.

Luckily there is a very easy way

to tell if this is a problem for you.

If you put your fingers

on the bridge of your nose,

you will feel it vibrate

if your soft palate is lowered.

Try it.

Put your fingers here and say NN-AH.

I feel a vibration for the N,

which has a lowered soft palate,

but not for the AH,

which has a raised soft palate.

There are only three sounds

in English that are nasal,

with a lowered soft palate.

They are N, M, and NG.

Many other languages have nasal vowels,

where the soft palate is down,

including Mandarin, Polish,

Hindi, French, and Portuguese.

If your native language has nasal vowels,

you'll really want to pay attention to this.

First, test yourself. Let's take the word ON.

It has the AH

as in FATHER vowel and the N consonant.

Say it slowly, holding your nose. ON.

Were you able to make the vowel

with no vibration?

Another word, SONG,

has the AW as in LAW vowel

followed by the NG consonant, song.

Were you able to make the vowel

with no vibration?

A lot of my students get concerned with the

idea of raising and lowering the soft palate.

It's sort of hard to feel, and hard see.

So I've told them

just to focus on keeping it lifted.

Somehow this does not interfere

with the nasal consonants.

I've never had a student

fix their overall sound

by keeping the soft palate raised,

but then mess up their nasal consonants.

So just focus on keeping it lifted.

How do you lift it.

There are a few ways

to get used to the feeling and the idea.

One way to get used to feeling

your soft palate is to suck through a straw.

When you suck through a straw,

your soft palate automatically closes

to prevent the liquid

from going up into your nasal cavity.

So, see if you can feel it close.

And if you can't then try sucking up

through the straw and holding it there.

If you hold it, that might make

you more aware of the feeling here,

especially when you let go.

See if you feel anything release.

So go ahead, open a can of soda,

treat yourself to that,

and practice feeling your soft palate.

Another method that may help you

lift your soft palate is to just think

of creating more space back here.

If you're creating more space,

you may automatically

lift your soft palate to accommodate that.

So you can focus on creating space in

the back of your mouth or throat as you talk.

Another way to feel your soft palate

is to watch yourself raising and lowering it.

Switch back and forth between AH and NG.

When you make the NG, of course,

you're lowering your palate.

So switch back and forth between the two,

and try to keep your tongue

in the same position.

That means it's your

soft palate that has to move.

Watch yourself in a mirror.

I'll demonstrate now,

so you should see what that looks like.

So, the soft palate:

it's hard to see and hard to feel,

but it does play an important role in the

placement of the voice in American English.

Play around with these exercises,

especially the last one,

and see if you can get used to the idea

of keeping your soft palate raised

in all vowel sounds and

most consonant sounds in American English.

This video is part of a series

on relaxation and placement.

If you liked the video,

check out the previous one

on the relaxation of the throat.

Please put any questions you have

in the comments section.

That's it, and thanks so much for using

Rachel's English.