Getting greater articulatory detail in your speech comes from making sure that you include consonant cluster sounds rather than elide them when you feel that the emphasis will serve you. Today we’ll look at a final consonant cluster that frequently …

Consonant Cluster: /-sts/ Read more »

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Just stop! You’re such a snob! I don’t get it! I’m so mad! I feel sick! Don’t make me beg! All these short sentences end in stop-plosive consonants. In more casual, intimate speech, we’re likely to not release these final …

Releasing Your Final Consonants Read more »

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“Vowels are the emotion, and consonants are the intellect.” This is a commonly believed assertion, that the emotional content of your speech is shared through the vowel sounds, which are “free, and open”, while the intellectual component (the meaning!) is …

Balancing Consonants and Vowels Read more »

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As the other posts in the Intelligibility Series have very clearly outlined, I strongly believe that intelligibility is a question of balance. Finding the right way to balance the language you speak will go a long way toward making your …

The Emphasis Recipe Read more »

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This weeks blog post is about strong forms and weak forms of words and how they help to make the language we speak more intelligible. Weak forms occur on small, less important words (like prepositions and articles) that link the …

Strong Forms and Weak Forms Read more »

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