The Ultimate Pronunciation Hack: Mouth Posture & the Center of Gravity | Sound American!

[@IgorOlikh]

Sometimes we need to navigate a long, obstacle-filled journey to reach a treasure like your video, and recognize that it is priceless.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Thanks so much 🙂

[@hyacinth120]

Josh, you're right. Tongue plays very important roles in speaking as much as in singing. Rachel who is an accent coach with millions of followers can totally relate as she's an Opera singer herself. Tongue is connected to vocal tract (larynx/pharynx) that can affect the sounds. Thus, Rachel with her friend Tom made a separate video for tounge exercises. Just sharing here.

[@ymj9481]

This is amazing. You made me realize why I don't sound natural even though I follow all the English pronounciation rules. Thanks for the great lecture!

[@hyacinth120]

Hi Josh, why are you so good and charming at the same time? I'll wait for the next video regarding exercises for this lesson. Meanwhile, I'm replaying this video to absorb the lesson and learn as much. 😘

[@ParanormalShortStory]

One big takeaway: All classes, no matter what the topic, should have soft jazz playing in the background.

[@merdinni]

Let me start by saying what I liked the most about your video, and then I'll tell you what I disagree with you on and why. I liked the fact that you debunked the myth that schwa is a relaxed sound. For native American English speakers, schwa may be a relaxed sound, but for non-native speakers like myself, it is a pain-in-the-tongue sound to pronounce at the beginning. I am a long-time English speaker who is quite fluent, but I still struggle with my accent. I love my accent, but I need to be more comprehensible in professional settings. I don't like the term "sound American" like some KZbin teachers use. I think it's more important to be understood than to sound like a native speaker. Strong accented speech can be an obstacle to achieve this goal. Accent training is a long journey. I have mastered the individual sounds, syllable stresses, word stresses and intonation. Intonation, in my opinion, is the same for most Indo-European languages, I can't talk for Ural-Altaic Languages. I feel like oral posture and voice placement are the keys to accent training. They should be taught first in every language class, regardless of the language. Unfortunately, other KZbin teachers who talked about these topics couldn't explain it better than you did. That shows how much thought, effort, and time you put into your video, and I appreciate that. I love my other KZbin teachers and I've learned a great deal from them. Maybe this was my "aha" moment, I came to this video with prior knowledge. I partially disagree with you on voice placement. I know you said that this is where you clash with other teachers. I agree that if you have the correct articulatory settings (a term other researchers use) in place, you will have the correct voice placement to a certain extent. However, I believe that if you speak from your chest with a little more effort, you will have better American sound quality. Additionally, more importantly, speaking from your chest can help preventing throat pain and headaches if your profession requires you to talk loud and a lot every day. Most teachers suffer from laryngitis because they have to speak loudly for several hours a day. When you speak from your chest, it is easier to be loud without straining your voice. If you speak from your throat, head, or falsetto, you will get vocal fatigue and headaches sooner rather than later. Of course, there are individual differences, and some Americans do speak from head or have very nasal voices. However, I believe that the majority of native American speakers speak from their chest. Overall, I thought your video was very informative and helpful. I appreciate you taking the time to address the myths and misconceptions about oral posture and voice placement.

[@eagleclean9322]

Great teacher most of the big channels don't go straight to the point with clear explanation.

[@dennybuck8777]

This is mind blowing. Literally.

[@dennybuck8777]

As I try to speak Italian and then shift back to American english I can feel like the tongue sits in different positions already, in Italian (which is similar to Spanish) the toungue is more close to the teeth and everything feels tight, it seems to me the lips are directing the sound like a conductor works for the orchestra. Where in english they are sooo relaxed. And as I speak Italian it feels like the tongue fills all the space in my mouth whether in english my tongue kinda sits there and minds its own business.

[@dennybuck8777]

Does that happen to you too as you try to speak Spanish and then shift back to english?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

It wasn't something I was aware of until recently. I did naturally have a bit of a shift, but after learning what's going on in Spanish, I've drastically improved the little accent that I had (though currently it's mostly in singing; haven't quite adapted it into speech for lack of practice)

[@sairakeshraj]

Wow i have done almost 20 courses with muliple nothing that worked more than this. You are awesome. Now i dont have to fake pushing air for plosives . Thank you so much

[@deniskaregeya3514]

Amazing and unique approach! I just missed the video that you referenced in this video. Would you please share the link!

[@jim6363]

As much as I try better my pronounciation I kind of noticed my tongue rolling around my mouth. I had to re learn lotta sounds but the T and D were the most difficult ones because in my native language that's Portuguese the T and D is made touching the teeth and as you said, in American English, the tongue is a little more back, compared to Portuguese. After getting used to the right placement of the tongue of the T and D I had noticed more space in my mouth, as if my tongue keep rolling around my mouth, kinda funny sensation. When I try to make the schwa sound with the T placement at the alveolar ridge as I've learnd it sounds more American and like that I kind of understand where is this center of gravity you're talking about. The sound is more deep compared to Portuguese, the schwa turns more flat if I use the Portuguese placement. That's really interesting, what's gonna be hard is getting used to use this placement as default making another sounds hahah

[@erytroxylon]

Great lesson! I learned so many new things today, thank you so much!Greetings from Romania!

[@xiaoyanli9186]

It sounds very similar to the concept of "articulatory setting" in the research area (or it may be just is). In Wikipedia, it says "In phonetics, the basis of articulation, also known as articulatory setting is the default position or standard settings of a speaker's organs of articulation when ready to speak. Different languages each have their own basis of articulation, which means that native speakers will share a certain position of tongue, lips, jaw, possibly even uvula or larynx, when preparing to speak. These standard settings enable them to produce the sounds and prosody of their native language more efficiently. Beatrice Honikman suggests thinking of it in terms of having a "gear" for English, another for French, and so on depending on which language is being learned". You can also find more scientific papers under this name, especially the one titled "Bringing the English Articulatory Setting into the classroom," which I feel may be very relevant to what you are talking about here. I really like your lectures, and I hope this piece of information could be helpful for your coming videos in this series.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Sounds about right. I might look further into that. Thanks :)

[@ajitshing8765]

Amazing explanation

[@irynajosse5332]

One of the best videos explaining the voice placement. Thank you !!!

[@eloiyv]

Great video explaining the voice placement. Thanks for sharing

[@cunjoz]

Thank you for this video. In many lessons on placement, the examples given between high and low placement actually result in different vowels so yeah, those aren't examples of different placement in the end.

[@itsFun-so8wu]

That's a really helpful video for improving I have an Indian accent and u know that's very hard so that's very hard for me to convert my hard accent into American accent and this video really really helps me a lot And this video helps me a lot and I improve myself very much Thanks @ENGLISH HACK

[@deliohector]

At long last! I've been anxiously waiting for this lesson for such a long time. I've been struggling with my voice quality for so long... You're absolutely right when you say that the way most teachers approach the concept of placement in Amr.E is insufficient and maybe even detrimental. I've tried it all...I've tried lowering my voice (which only resulted in it sounding stilted), I've tried raising my soft palate (which wasn't easy at all btw) in hopes of creating more space in my mouth, I've tried lowering my Adam's apple (which, again, resulted in a weird, unnatural, deep voice), I've tried pretending as if my mouth is where my throat meets my chest and tried to project my voice from there...all this to little or no avail. That's until I listened to an episode of the Language Hacking Podcast hosted by Benny Lewis and Shannon, where they were chatting with Eliza Simpson, who's a voice and accent coach and she so happens to be the person who introduced me to the concept of “mouth posture”, and the “thinking sound” being the “center of gravity” of the accent. Suddenly, it all clicked! Needless to say that my mind was blown to pieces that day, and the way I view accents would never be the same. From then on out I embarked on a journey to put those concepts into practice, and I even commented on my findings during one of your lives, and I asked for your take on it, remember? Anyways, now I'm wondering whether my comments inspired you in any way to create this lesson (I'll be elated if it turns out to be true 😁). Anywho, I agree with literally everything you said, and I'm anxiously waiting for the exercises. Thank you so very much for caring about us language nerds 🤓. Keep up the great work!

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Embarrassingly, I don't quite remember that 😅 But I do have some memory problems, so that's probably why. I remember encountering the term mouth posture for the first time in my own research, probably after your comment. But that's not to say your comment didn't plant a seed and I just don't remember 🙃 But did this person on the podcast really use the same term "center of gravity"? If so, that's even more validating for my approach. The results I'm seeing with the people I'm working with and the new techniques/exercises I'm developing in the process are amazing! I definitely want to get the exercise lesson put together, but I'm still testing and exploring. I might end up making another exercise video in the future bc of that 🙂 Any feedback you have related to this topic us always appreciated, especially from someone who's been through so many different approaches. I think we're really on to something here 😀

[@deliohector]

@@NativeEnglishHacks Eliza Simpson didn't use those exact words, but she def meant the exact same thing. Here's what she said: “When you're dealing with the positioning of a dialect, there's a term called “VOCAL TRACT POSTURE”, which refers to the way a speaker holds in the accent their jaw, their tongue, their lips, and this can function like a HOMEBASE, so the sounds of the language ORBIT around this homebase(...) like PLANETS AROUND THE SUN, and if you find it, all of those sounds become so much easier (...) It can feel like a no-brainer for those of us who start there, but for those of us where posture isn't the intuitive first place, I think, in terms of language learning, this can FEEL LIKE A HACK- Once you get the posture, you're like 'Oh! Now I have all the cheat codes cuz now my tongue is perfectly positioned to make that vowel that before was tricky. There's a term called “THINKING SOUND” which refers to that kind of nonverbal, audible sound that escapes from a speaker when they know they want to say something, but they're not sure what that thing is (...) I feel like they (the thinking sounds) are kind of like the LITMUS TEST OF THE POSTURE- It's where all of the articulators want to go when they want to be as close as possible to all sounds in the accent, kind of like a goalie going to the center of a goal when they know that the ball is going to come eventually”.

[@deliohector]

@@NativeEnglishHacks She then started to emulate different thinking sounds from different languages, which are essentially different versions of the schwa sound in those languages. Also, she did point out that “IT'S NOT A RULE, but it can definitely be a WAY TO THAT POSTURE”.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Omg, 1000% agree! This is exactly what I've discovered to be true. You're gonna LOVE some of the exercises I have planned 😀

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Also completely agree. The Russian schwa, for example, sounds like a schwa, but it doesn't quite sound American. And no, it's not a 100% rule, which is why I said it's not an exact science, but it's a very powerful tool and framework

[@erens_vlog]

thank you very much

[@lilybrook268]

Hi! I noticed that when I speak English, the muscles under my jaw (like you have mentioned around 27:10 )and around my neck are pretty tense and the airflow kind of like get blocked. These doesn’t happened when I speak native language. (At least not to the degree that would affects the fluency of speech.) is there any exercise that I could do to fix this?

[@keviny7480]

Where exactly is the middle of the tongue tho lol still confused about the locations of the tongue parts... haha

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Imagine your tongue and divide it roughly into 3 equal pieces (keeping in mind that the back starts going into the throat). The middlle piece is the middle of the tongue

[@fayewu7505]

great

[@Av-gw9bg]

Ummm, I sounded like Donald Trump. Well, Donald Trump is an American. So, that might be a good sign lol. My lungs were suffering though. I felt like a drunk guy. My whole vocal system was tense.

[@hivyfalou1393]

is it possibl that I can speak the American accent totally native or it can only be close to native American?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

I believe any average person can develop at least a near perfect accent and very likely a perfect accent if they use the right tools, techniques, and put in the work required (it's not easy). Some individuals may only be able to reach near perfect and below average individuals might not be able to reach even that, but they can still develop good, clear communication. Statistically, I would say yes, you can reach a native level. But not unless you develop the correct posture, which is the core of an accent

[@hivyfalou1393]

yeah people think I studied abroad when I speak, but for me I can notice how annoying this gap is, I really want to know what to focus on the most if I want to reach a native level, I guess I had a lazy articulation before but I'm practicing more now so that I oercome it@@NativeEnglishHacks

[@FluentAmerican]

Nice video! I feel like you positioned this as being very much against what knowledge is shared in other places, but I guess I'm struggling to see many differences. The terms used may not be the same, but the major concepts and goals (including of "placement" vs "center of gravity" and "posture"), remain the same, unless I'm misinterpreting what was said here. Getting more air to pass through the throat and stop the tongue from getting in the way remains a big concern for pronunciation students

[@tr1f4ek]

Think the difference between the main narrative and what I’m seeing in the video is that this is saying it’s not that you simply speak from your chest or have to relax but it’s more complex, you need to gain control over the whole vocal tract and bring it down to sound more like an american. Hopefully that makes sense.

[@FluentAmerican]

Hi @@tr1f4ek; could be! I think "relax" and "speak from the throat" are certainly the buzzwords you see with many other videos (quick and easy takeaways for students to keep in mind though simplified), but I think that air flow, especially through the throat/back of the mouth, is still the major concept, especially finding techniques to keep the tongue/muscles from blocking it; this video only seems to reinforce that more for me, but with different wording

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

At the end of the day, our goals are the same: to help learners. There's always more than one way to look at things, which I think is fine. But to me, the idea of placement is insufficient at best and misleading or possibly wrong at worst. In my opinion, it's not about trying to move your voice. That's a result mostly of how the tongue is held (pushed forward or not, for example). Telling a student to lower their voice might help if they just so happen to shift the tongue correctly in the process, but I've had quite a few people ask me how to "speak from the chest" (and do so without merely lowering their tone), which simply doesn't make any sense to me and really has nothing to do with anything, at least as far as I can tell playing with things myself and testing some things on my students. Though the *term* placement is perfectly applicable and fine, the way that it's used in reference to the chest and some abstract idea of "lowering your vocal tract" and/or "relaxing" is, imo, simply not helpful and tends to confuse people. Regardless, you've had success and others like Rachel have had success, so clearly there's more than one way to look at these things and, bc every learner is a little different, some will find one approach more helpful and some will find the other more helpful. I think that's all fine and perfectly natural. But I have to call it how I see it and be real with my audience, especially when it comes to things like hacks. I know some will hate the way I explain this, just like some people hate my approach to prepositions. But my content isn't for those people. In addition, in terms of the tongue getting in the way, so far I seem to be effectively eradicating this problem relatively simply with my approach as I test things with my current students (especially for the back of the tongue). Just saying "relax" (which is misleading bc it's not entirely true) or to open more/lower the tongue isn't helpful. Bringing tactile conscious awareness to what the tongue is doing, especially in the back, is necessary. That's really what my whole approach is about and then using that awareness to shift properly. But you're correct that the concepts are similar. They're definitely aimed at the same goal. But I wouldn't say they're merely different terms pointing to the same thing. If nothing else, I'm simply trying to provide a different way to conceptualize what's happening in the mouth. There's a bit more to all this that I didn't include here because it's best saved for the exercise lesson. That might be where you start to see a few differences

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Partially. It's not about bringing things down, it's about shifting the way the tongue (and to an extent, other areas) is held

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Breathing is a minor point in the scheme of things here (though certainly a big point in itself) and is simply mentioned bc 1) it's needed to sound natural and 2) it goes back to the openness I was describing with everything else. I didn't want to leave it out only bc my students who have shown improvement showed double improvement just by adding breath in addition to the other parts

[@finn6981]

when I do the i sound (as in bee) I feel like all of my tongue goes up, not only the tip, exactly how you said it in the video (23:21). I noticed that if I do it with only the tip of my tongue (as you said) it has more of a schwa quality to it, exactly like eh (as in set) and i (as in sit). When I do it the way I would normally do it (raising all of my tongue) it feels more like the ay sound (as in make), the middle/back of my tongue also lifts and touches the molars and here it's not schwa like at all, unlike eh, and ih (set and sit), which feel very schwa like to me.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

It is possible to not have the back of tongue completely down, but regardless of how I do it, I feel that connection to the schwa posture. If the back is raised, there's simply a dip in the middle, at least in my mouth. Regardless, as I said, the EE sounds very similar across languages and some (maybe most) ways of doing it are so close that natives probably won't notice the difference. I used it mainly as an example to illustrate that even the more closed vowel sounds can be linked to the schwa center of gravity.

[@finn6981]

@@NativeEnglishHacks when you make the i sound like you did here 23:21, does it feel connected to the schwa? no right? Also, the ay diphthong (as in make) doesn't feel connected to the schwa does it?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

No, that was intentionally keeping the whole tongue close to the roof and keeping very little space. So it wouldn't feel connected to the schwa bc it's a different posture. ALL sounds will (or at least can) either feel a very subtle line of tension leading back to the schwa, leading back to a slightly shifted schwa (the ball moving in the mouth), or at the very least will be close to something like that, as if it's being slightly pulled in that direction. I didn't add it, but in the exercise lesson, I'll be giving an example of how this works through an entire sentence. If I pay super close attention to my tongue, I can almost always feel the subtle line of tension or at least getting pulled toward that center of gravity in some way throughout my entire speech

[@laracroftvideos]

A cultural reset

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

? I'm confused lol

[@laracroftvideos]

@@NativeEnglishHacks I’ll elaborate later but take it as the highest of compliments 😁😁😁 Also sooo many funny moments from the dog when you talk about tongue tension to the confused lady as you’re trying to make a completely relaxed sound 🤣

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Awesome. Was trying to make it more engaging 🙂

[@laracroftvideos]

@@NativeEnglishHacks Love it!!! Btw, isn’t 34:55 what Donald Trump is doing quite literally ALL THE TIME? 🤣🤣 He immediately came to mind when you puckered the lips like that 💀💀💀💀

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Lol yeah. I was tempted to throw up a picture of him during that. But everyone makes fun of it bc it's weird, so you don't want to do that 😆

[@DRIPPYBEATZ]

Letsssgoooo

[@kayseriann]

I just wanna say that after watching this video, I became very, very much aware of my tongue (Chandler, 1994) haha BUT it makes so much sense, especially the thing about the ball. I found this video after typing in "relaxed tongue position when speaking American English" in Google. I couldn't get the "t" sound quite right, so I tried experimenting with my tongue/lip/teeth to make the right "t" sound (or make it easier to pronounce English words with t, e.g. "master"). Then I realized why it's hard for me to pronounce "master".. it is because my tongue is just a tiny bit bent when it should actually be more bent than normal (for me), like having a small spherical marble nestled on my tongue. I think this is the case for most Filipinos. When we pronounce Filipino/Tagalog words with "t" in it, our tongue is straight and shortened/contracted, e.g. "totoo" (totoo = true) (or is it just me? hahaha). That's why it's a struggle to pronounce English words that need curved tongue. So the BALL thing really helps with my pronunciation.

[@SamJammang-fo9wq]

@kayseriann Napakahalaga talaga ng center of gravity 😅 pero yung pinaka challenging saken pag sinusubukan kong magsalita ng american english is yung TH sound. * Through The, What's This, North Side, Towards The, Both Seem, Rather Than, Fourth Seat, etc... Wala ata TH sound sa Tagalog