How To Do Accents. Jan Haydn Rowles
This icon prompts you to focus in a visual way, either by looking at an illustration, using your mind’s eye, or looking in a mirror.
Creating a Funnel
When learning new sounds it helps to have a way of listening to yourself that is instant and gives you an accurate ‘outside ear’ on the sounds you are making. You can do this by ‘funnelling’ the sound from your mouth straight back to your ear.
Put one hand about five centimetres (two inches) away from your mouth, cup it onto the bottom of the other hand which then in turn cups behind the ear, creating a funnel from one to the other.
You will know you’ve got the position right when you hear your voice loud and clear, even when you are speaking quietly. This is especially invaluable when you are working in a group, or when you need to practise quietly.
Practising
When you were a child you dedicated hours to hearing the sounds, and/or seeing the shapes of the faces around you, playing with the shape of your mouth, until the sounds and shapes you were making matched the sounds and shapes you were hearing and/or seeing. Then you practised those shapes and movements over and over again until they became locked into your muscle memory. That’s what children do. That’s what you did and how you learned to speak. That’s why you have an accent, even if you think you don’t!
For some of you, your mimicry instinct may still be active – maybe you’ve always enjoyed playing with new sounds – while others of you may have turned it off long ago, happy to sound like those around you. Whichever you are, prepare to switch your mimicry instinct back on and practise as hard as a child!
Remember, learning how to do accents is just like anything else you’ve successfully learnt: riding a bike, speaking a language, or even navigating a new mobile phone. Some things seem to come easily; others seem to take longer to get into the muscle memory. Separate out the different elements, identify what you know, recognise what you don’t know and then learn, re-learn and above all practise. During this process your awareness is very high and the focus and juggling can seem complicated. Don’t panic – this just means there is more learning taking place! Soon the elements come together and the process seems natural and effortless.
Processing
To help you teach your left brain (where logic and structure live) to store the discoveries you are making, the Haydn/Sharpe System provides you with two invaluable tools.
| ● | You and the New |
| One thing that will really help you to do other accents is understanding your own. By building a profile of the qualities specific to your own accent you can establish a solid base from which to navigate other accents. | |
| If you look towards the back of the book (pages 192–201), you will see a chart called You and the New. You will be prompted at the end of each chapter to fill it in. Once filled in, this will provide you with an instant comparison between your accent and the new accents you are working on, showing you where the most significant changes are. Photocopy this before you start, as you may want to use it each time you learn a new accent. (Alternatively, you can download the chart as a ready-to-print pdf from the How to Do Accents website at www.howtodoaccents.com.) | |
| ● | Checklists |
| At the end of each chapter we have provided a checklist of the elements you will be looking out for in any new accent. Use these to be sure you leave no stone unturned in your search for an authentic, detailed accent. |
Learning an accent is all about layering. Take it a piece at a time, practise all the pieces and then put them all together. And above all be prepared to make mistakes and sound silly: this is just you and your brain learning!
1
GET STARTED
IN THIS CHAPTER…
We introduce you to three areas that you need to be on top of before you begin work on any accent:
| 1 | Knowing your equipment. Accents are physical. They are made by your body. In order to adapt you will need to have some basic knowledge of the physical equipment you have and how it works. In this section we introduce you to those basics. |
| 2 | Making and using a Resource Recording. One essential practical requirement when learning a new accent is a resource recording. You cannot learn an accent out of thin air. In this section we show you how to find, make and use a resource recording to get the most from yourself and this book! |
| 3 | Getting into the Scene. Accents don’t exist in a vacuum. They are made by living, breathing communities, subject to the vagaries of history, politics, peer pressure, climate, culture, economics and more. You name it: somewhere along the line external influences have had and continue to have an effect on the way we speak. Contextualising your accent is a vital step towards owning it and making it real. |
If you are about to study a specific accent make sure you have the following before you start:
| 1 | A good resource recording of the accent. |
| 2 | A recording device that you can also play back on. |
| 3 | A mirror. |
| 4 | A notebook. |
| 5 | This book. (Obviously.) |
KNOWING YOUR EQUIPMENT
Our lips, jaw, tongue, soft palate and cheeks are always on the move, flicking, tapping, gliding and making contact with one another, dancing their way through thousands and thousands of different shapes and sounds, and yet we don’t give it a second thought!
In order to understand how all these shapes and sounds are made it helps to be familiar with your own bits, the Articulators, and to know what the various parts are called, which part is being used, and how the various parts make contact.
In other words, to do accents you will need to know which active articulator is doing what with which passive articulator!