YOUR English Voice = Voice Placement + THIS

[@kevinymagalhaes]

Still watching all of your oldest videos, soon enough I'll get here to watch this new lesson. But I loved the editing of this one!

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Thanks! Trying to up my game.

[@noor1111111]

You are creative and wonderful at teaching

[@js_guyman]

Notes for myself 3:00 Voice Placement Definition 4:38 moving voice higher to lower on eh sound 7:07 pitch vs placement demonstration 8:40 Slightly tighten stomach muscles, to feed your breath upwards for use in making sound 9:30 Americans shift tension from throat to stomach as they speak 13:57 location of global resonance in mouth in other languages verse American English, which is further back

[@elenasuchkova7714]

You are one of the best teachers ❤

[@أحمدالدسوقي-ت9س]

I am in love with. I wished all the episode to be performed in the Joker mode. Great acting :)

[@أحمدالدسوقي-ت9س]

The knowledge provided in the video is of great help and importance. You're the best out there, and I already recommended your channel to many English learners on Telegram, Busuu and Discord. However, the text displayed on the screen and its associated sound effects are really overwhelming and annoying. Try to make it simple. It would be more helpful if you just organize the displayed text or core information into a PDF file.

[@SycAamore]

That's a great video, and I think together with Geoff from Fluent American you are the only 2 teachers on KZbin that give serious attention to placement in American English. And this is such a crucial part of sounding natural! I read some time ago that strengthening the neck muscles, and more specifically the sternocleidomastoids, can open up the throat and bring the placement lower. I started doing neck crunches every day, and I think this helped me somehow with bringing my placement further down. I will be interested to hear what you think about that and if you saw this mentioned somewhere else.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

In my opinion, there can be benefit to neck training as there are likely some small muscles we're using to hold things open/in place, but the biggest part of the problem is learning to relax what's already tight in the learner's native language. Once they can figure out how to do that, then it's just a matter of trying to keep it, which will naturally strengthen any muscles needed for it. American English overall - in terms of posture, the articulation of sounds, and even less directly in things like linking and reductions - tends toward relaxedness and I'm constantly having to remind the people I work with to relax, loosen up, make things lighter, etc

[@SycAamore]

​@@NativeEnglishHacks Thanks, that's encouraging to hear! I think it's worth every effort to develop a deeper voice/have a lower placement. It just sounds better. I think I'm getting there, but I find it quite challenging to make it a habit. Do you think practising lower placement in my native language could help with developing that habit?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

@SycAamore tldr: if your goal is to sound as natural and native as possible, then no Full answer: No. Remember, the main point of this lesson is that voice placement is a natural consequence of mouth posture (which includes the throat). If you try to get a lower placement in your native language, though you might see some result and these pieces can be controlled somewhat independently, you'll probably either sound weird and/or not be able to say things normally. It's likely you'll also give yourself an accent in your own language (not permanent unless reinforced constantly over a long period) because to truly and fully shift the placement, you have to shift the entire posture, at least if you want to sound as native as possible. All you'd really be doing is reinforcing the wrong combination of posture pieces. Plus, if I try to get my placement to a better place in Spanish, but I speak English, my voice sounds a bit ridiculous, kinda like I have a little helium or a stereotypical "nerd" voice. You have to think of these settings (as discussed in this lesson and the previous one) as one big complex or unit that is the root of why natives sound the way they do - both for their voice and overall accent. My approach (which I believe is where Fluent American and I differ) is to find/build the placement from the posture as opposed to trying to get the placement as its own thing - which will get you results, and maybe sufficient for your personal goals, but that approach will never be enough to sound 100% native in my experience. Though it didn't make it into the final cut of this video, I've had several students who, without even knowing what voice placement is, shifted their placement just by focusing on the posture as a whole (including details like breath and resonance in the mix, as well, which are peripheral parts of the posture). In the short term as you learn to control the basic details, however, yes, practicing this placement in your native language can be useful, but it's just a stepping stone that you should move past asap

[@SycAamore]

@@NativeEnglishHacks Thanks for the very thorough answer! I have been practising speaking with a deeper voice in my native language and it's very tempting to keep it! I think I sound more convincing and confident. Btw, is a deeper voice the same as lower placement? I think this applies even to native speakers. Here in the UK a male Brit would usually have a very high placement and sound almost childish. So I think the benefits of having a deeper voice go beyond sounding natural, but probably they are the same thing anyway😀

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

@SycAamore As I discussed in the mistake "only changing pitch," your placement will slightly change your pitch, but changing your pitch does NOT change your placement. Having a slightly deeper voice RELATIVE to your native language is simply a by-product of your correctly shifted posture settings, especially in the throat. Sounding deeper can come across as more confident or masculine, sure, but it's not at all required and is only one factor in such things. By the way, the reason UK males seem to sound a bit higher is because British English has a different posture setting. Some details are the same, but they seem to be a bit closer to the settings for Spanish overall. However, I'm not an expert on British English and this is just my personal observation combined with some pieces of data I've found.

[@FluentAmerican]

great stuff Josh!

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Hey! Thanks. How've you been?

[@FluentAmerican]

we're good; glad to see you back in the game in earnest--it's affirming to see so many of the points you're covering mirror similar aspects I've been working with students on! How's San Diego?@@NativeEnglishHacks

[@GP71_OO]

This is great thank you so much, amazing

[@learninglanguages744]

I usually don't give a thumbs up, but holy sh*t it was amazing haha

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Thanks for the feedback and glad you liked it 🙂

[@laura3619]

Wow....loved it!!

[@Englishimmersion-tt7zz]

great video!!

[@AF-qg1zu]

I was waiting for this video like I was waiting for the last dark knight movie

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

😆

[@nashwanalaezy4727]

Thanks so much 🙏

[@eyefat89]

Thank you so much for this video! I really like the editing! I have noticed that when i speak russian, my voice feels like it's located at the beggining of my mouth??? if that make sense lol. And also it does feel like the top of my throat vibrates more. But when i put 2 fingers on my throat and spoke English, the bottom of my throat vibrated the most. And also I feel the resonance near my throat. So i think I'm doing things correctly lol

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

I told you lol. And yes, Russian voice placement is higher in the throat and, if I'm not mistaken, the resonance is at the front of the mouth.

[@eyefat89]

@@NativeEnglishHacks yeah, the resonance is at the front for sure lolol

[@Ygor-qn3uf]

Perfect!

[@iiAbdullah635]

Note: mostly irrelevant, however, motivational, kinda. I've been learning English since 2020. About four years ago, I started. I didn't even know for how long I was learning. I thought it might've been 6 to 7 years; I was overestimating. It turned out I was able to achieve all this, which I consider impressive, in a short time. Remember, English, for me, an Arabic speaker, is as hard as Chinese for an English speaker. I didn't even realize or even cross mind that someone could possibly do something near or resemble this. When I was being asked by people for how long I have been learning. They were flabbergasted by how quick and swift the process was-I would tell them 7 years(I was estimating off the top of my head. The real time is 4 years only). And I'm not saying to flex nor show off, but to tell you It's possible. It might be worth mentioning that I spent a lot of money to do this, though. I've spent zero dollars, yep, all free.

[@iiAbdullah635]

Come to think of it, I can learn 20 languages by this rate before I die. Interesting perspective.

[@miguelsuarezlume.5806]

Dude! I'm an extremely fan of horror movies and stuff and I don't lately find horror movies scary but your brief acting was awesome and creepy to me.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Thanks 🙂 My performance has a lot of room for improvement, though. At least I know I did something right haha. The background music probably helped a bit, too. *I'm an extreme fan

[@Kevin4u2c]

Thanks teacher!

[@LinhKieu-ku5om]

Really love your video, finally i find my right voice and placement but one thing i confused is how we can breath in the next sentence because in my mother tongue, we use voice more than breath so i don't really know how to do it. Hope you make a video about it

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Well, I covered that in this lesson under the section "Build from the bottom up with the breath". As also mentioned, I have more information in the Phase 0 and Phase 1 lessons (you can skip to the breathing parts using the timestamps). In addition, I have these older videos, which might also help: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rpSXi5Sqg9qkrtE kzbin.info/www/bejne/j5SrZmt6jqemeMU kzbin.infoP7fxStgVdKk?feature=share

[@LinhKieu-ku5om]

@@NativeEnglishHacksthankiuuu so much, i really love your efforts to make these helpful video lessons for non-native speaker. Your channel will be viral soon

[@GP71_OO]

America is full of various races and ethnicities, even the majority of white americans have non american heritages, but theyre not constantly saying they're Italian american or Irish americans, I think raven is right in a lot of what she said

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

??? Who's raven?

[@iiAbdullah635]

Raven from Titans Go?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Lol I was thinking early 2000's Teen Titans

[@GP71_OO]

​@@NativeEnglishHacksOMG I was just commeting on a raven symone video and somehow the comment ended up here, I don't know why? 😂😂😂

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Oh lol. Probably the video reached the end and loaded this one as you were submitting the comment and youtube posted it here. That glitch happened to me before

[@Justin-ur7ic]

So all we have to do to sound native is 1-getting the right mouth poster 2-lowering our pitch 3-getting the sounds right That’s all right?🙂💔 Regarding the Japanesse man, When you said that he still sounds Japanesse, did you mean that was bc of his voice or his pronunciaiton? Bc i heard him saying granted differently form americnas, the A was not nasle so I think that was what you meant. what would cause the speaker to sound a bit like where he/she is from? Is it the voice of the person ?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

To sound native: get the posture right (which includes the center of gravity) and get the sounds right (part of which is the posture underneath them). The pitch shift is a consequence of the posture shift and is not something you actively change by itself. Kaz still sounds a bit Japanese for several reasons. According to my ears, he's still using the Japanese center of gravity (the E, like we have at the start of EI) and the way he's forming some sounds is a bit off compared to how Americans do them. There could be other minor things like rhythm, but those details don't stand out immediately to me. His voice placement/throat setting seems perfect and as a result, it helped him partially shift some other parts of the posture with it (I assume by accident), but that just shows even more how all the pieces of the posture are connected as one big unit.

[@Justin-ur7ic]

​@@NativeEnglishHacks I actually have a question regarding the tongue. Well you said that the back of the tongue have to be pulled back. When I back the whole tongue to the forth tooth, does the back automatically sit back?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

@Justin-ur7ic Unfortunately, no. Many languages hold the back up and forward, so just lining up with the hinge won't be enough. It's one point that needs to be in place, but if your native language holds the back/whole tongue forward, you have to relax the back, too

[@Justin-ur7ic]

@@NativeEnglishHacks I pulled my tongue back to the forth tooth and let it lay down and checked that in the mirror that means I did it correctly right? I mean it's not that complicated right?🙂💔

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

@Justin-ur7ic It's not complicated, but it's complex. Getting the right result can be difficult because your native language posture feels relaxed to you, but it's not. Sound is king. Only getting feedback can tell you for certain

[@iiAbdullah635]

The goat.

[@iiAbdullah635]

In the word "will" or "we". Can I pronounce the w with little to no rise of the back of the tongue? Instead, I just tense the tongue back of the tongue without much rise.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Maybe for a lazy W. I'm having a hard time getting my tongue to not come up in the back

[@iiAbdullah635]

To me, placemant has to do with the back of the tongue. The more it's raised and the rest of tognue relaxed, the more it goes down to the chest. Placement is a weird thing anwyays. You can totally ignore it and try to get the tognue shape only.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

That may be language-specific. idk. In my experience, I've had dozens of people get the back of tongue in place, but very rarely does it result in the correct placement, and if it does, it's only because they also ended up shifting the throat by accident. I could see the back of the tongue having a bigger role between two languages that have a higher placement, or between two languages that have a lower placement, but not between languages with different throat heights/tension. There's just too much of a gap for the tongue to make up the difference by itself. Given what we touched on before (if I remember correctly, it was with you), I'd think your tongue is already in a more or less good position height-wise, and you'd mostly have to lower the throat setting, in part letting the tongue come backward. I'm really confused, though, by your assertion that a high back of tongue with a relaxed rest of tongue leads to a voice more toward the chest. If I raise the back of my tongue (and quite high, at that) and keep the rest relaxed, my voice only moves a bit higher (NOT lower), nowhere near what another language would be, and not even out of range for what we would expect in American English. On the contrary, I end up blocking the back of my mouth with that raised tongue, which causes distortion in how I sound. What might be happening in your case is you have a muscular complex that's tying the back of the tongue height to your throat setting in a weird way, like a reverse pulley system, part of which may be that raising the back of tongue causes you to open and/or relax the top of throat area. I recommend trying to get the throat/voice result WITHOUT raising the back of the tongue, but if you sound good, it doesn't really matter.

[@iiAbdullah635]

Higher and more backward. It actually has to do with backward more the higher. It feels probably different to you because 1- the two of us have two different start point(mouth posture). 2- Placement is more of an imaginary thing. Yes, I do sound good.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

@iiAbdullah635 Backward more than higher makes more sense. I wouldn't say it's imaginary, though. Try telling that to a Thai or Vietnamese speaker who's stuck all the way up in the nose. In fact, tell that to the Spanish speakers who say I sound much better when I shift my placement higher. And of course, every student I've worked with who, after shifting correctly, end up with shock on their faces when their voice suddenly falls to the bottom of the throat. Yes, placement is just a byproduct of posture and the concept itself can be completely ignored, but it's not imaginary.

[@deliohector]

P.S: I'm looking forward to the video on how to shadow and other videos along the same lines as this one.

[@deliohector]

Did KZbin delete my comment? I had written a longer and more fleshed-out comment which I can't find now. I hadn't used any derogatory expressions or anything that would warrant it being flagged. 😥

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

@deliohector yeah, I was wondering why it said P.S. 😆 I don't see any comments under "held for review", so no idea

[@Ygor-qn3uf]

Normally I speak English kind of leading the words, you know? Causing a certain emphasis, but apparently the words go lower, right?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

I don't understand what you mean

[@iiAbdullah635]

What am i watching? This is dope.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

High praise, sir. No issues with this one? 🙃

[@iiAbdullah635]

@NativeEnglishHacks many issues. I just know you've worked a lot on it. I might be a critic, but I'm not evil. It'll get better over time. But if you insist. The board like this one "1:03" sucks. The writing sound effect is worse than the board itself. It's dope compared to the previous content, not in general.

[@eyefat89]

​@@iiAbdullah635 bruh you're literally nitpicking at this point. Personally, I liked everything in this video, especially the editing. It's improved a lot. Have 0 problem w it.

[@iiAbdullah635]

Especially, the writing sound effect. There are people who literally cannot tolerate this sound. I'm one of them. It's super unpleasant for us. It is a problem. The editing still has room for improvement. I pointed out some things I disliked nothing more. Overall better than his previous videos. I don't care about montage; however, I care about the information.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

It's cool. Any feedback is appreciated

[@javirodriguez5617]

You look yonger without the goatee,,,greetings.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Thanks. I prefer the beard, though 🙃