Posts Tagged tongue
Riding the Wave of the Tongue Part 2
In Ride the Wave of the Tongue (Part 1), we explored the glide action of the tongue, that can move like a wave in the mouth, especially the forward/backward movement of that wave. That action helps to define the different vowel sounds you can make with your mouth, from "ee" [i] in the front to "oo" [u] in the back. Those two vowels are common to many of the world's languages, though they may be more with greater intensity than they are made in English. In other words, the "ee" [i] sound might be made with greater narrowing, with the tongue closer to the alveolar ridge, or the "oo" [u] sound might be made with greater lip rounding and the tongue arching further back.
In foreign languages, we also encounter sounds not heard in English at all. For instance, in French words like "tu, une" are made with a vowel that is rounded like "oo" [u] , but is made with the tongue arched forward like "ee" [i]. The IPA symbol for this sound is [y], and the sound itself isn't all that hard to make. Lock your lips into a very tight kiss-like position, and say "ee". If you find yourself saying "oo", begin by saying "ee" and then round your lips forward while not allowing your tongue to move in your mouth. Using a mirror can make this easier, I find.
The unrounded equivalent of "oo" [u] is represented in the IPA by the symbol [ɯ]. Again, to make it simply make an "oo" sound and then spread your lips wide. I find that this has a far less dramatic sound change than the change you get when you go from [i] to [y]. I also think it is harder to change your lips on this one without your tongue gliding forward to the "ee" sound. You will have to concentrate to anchor your tongue in the [u] position. Though this sound is used in Vietnamese (they have both [u] and [ɯ]), it is used in some accents of English as a replacement for [u]. For people who never round their lips (think surfer "dudes" [dɯdz]), this sound is easy and practical. Some people might judge it as "lazy" in comparison to their own speech; I like to imagine it as being "economical."
So let us revisit the "Riding the Wave" action, but this time doing it with the lips locked either in the rounded position, or the unrounded position. We did the unrounded version as part of part 1, so really this is just review. The sound can be represented like this:
[i] → [ɯ] → [i] (unrounded)
[u] → [y] → [u] (rounded)
I find that it really helps to put fingers on your face to keep your lips from moving into the familiar shapes rather than staying in the unfamiliar positions. Once you've gotten proficient at doing these unfamiliar actions, try going back and forth between the two unfamiliar shapes/sounds:
[y] → [ɯ] → [y]
rounded → unrounded → rounded
In our next step, we'll look at stopping halfway through the glide on two other new vowels, [ʉ] and [ɨ].
Separating the Actions of the Jaw and Tongue Part 2
We've just isolated both the jaw and tongue. Now we need to combine the jaw and tongue. The sounds that are probably the most difficult to do with tongue alone (read impossible to do without the jaw) are /s/ and /ʃ/ sounds. You can try to do them without the jaw, but it isn't really possible. (If you can do it without movement of your jaw, I say "yeah!" But most of us can't.) I'm going to offer you a chance to work on the sound "suh" [sʌ sʌ], allowing your jaw to move with the action of the tongue. Try to take time to let your tongue relax with it sitting inside your mouth. See if you can relax your jaw somewhat by making a /s/ sound, and carefully opening your mouth very slightly, trying to maintain a good /s/ quality.
The challenge for [sʌ sʌ] is in opening on to vowel. So we'll practice it here: make your open /s/ sound and then drop your jaw into the [ʌ] vowel. "sssss (drop) uh…" [ssssss ʌʌʌʌʌʌʌʌ].
As you can feel, the jaw drop is an important part of the release into the vowel. Take a moment to leave the sound out of it and explore the action of the jaw as if you were chewing a cloud. This image is designed to make the action of the opening and closing as light and easy as possible. Now, with the image firmly planted in your mind's eye, make your /s/ on a light cloud of action, integrating the jaw movement with the tongue.
Keeping the very light, easy chewing action sensation, and imagining a cloud of /s/, go back to half-whispering, half-speaking "suh suh suh suh suh," with an easy, almost lazy feel to it. Then add more voice to it, and kick the /s/ energy up a notch by making it /z/, so you're sighing on voice "zuh zuh zuh zuh zuh," [zʌ zʌ zʌ zʌ zʌ]. Try to find some pleasure in the sensation of an easy correlation between jaw and tongue, letting the sound out gently and playfully.
Finally, let's work on the jaw drop action on a tongue twister with lots of /s/ sounds in it.
Singing Sammy sung songs on sinking sand.
Each word (except "on") begins with an /s/, so there are lots of opportunities to work on the jaw drop on the vowel that follows. After quick exploration, you'll probably realise that the words with "close" vowels, like "Singing Sammy" and "sinking sand" require very little jaw drop, while the more open vowels, on "sung songs" demand more room, and allow you to drop your jaw more dramatically. See if you can say the tongue twister and really feel that jaw action in the middle of it. Keep imaging that "cloud" feeling we were working on before. Now, try this tongue twister, which has much more room for opening throughout:
Sounding by sound is a sound method of sounding sounds.
Each "sound" word affords you the opportunity to drop your jaw in order to get that "ou" [aʊ] sound out. Let your tongue tip shape the /s/, and your jaw jumps you to the vowel place.
Riding the Wave of the Tongue
In previous voice warm-ups we've done Tongue Rolls, both big and small. Now we're going to work on letting that arch action, isolated in the earlier post "Separating the Actions of the Jawn and Tongue" slide from front to back, between two vowels, "ee" and "oo" — [i] and [u].
Start by feeling the placement of the tongue on the vowel "ee" [i]. This vowel is made with the tip of the tongue behind the lower front teeth, and the front of the tongue arching up toward the alveolar ridge. You can feel that action far better if you start your [i] by dropping your jaw, and then making the vowel, keeping your jaw dropped. Your tongue will have to reach up to that [i] spot. Really the vowel is a narrowing of the space in the mouth at the front.
Now, try a similar experiment with the "oo" [u] vowel. Then slide between the [i] and the [u] sound. I've made a video of this you can watch here.
However, because [u] requires lip rounding, this will be a distraction from feeling the action of the tongue. So to feel what the tongue does, I'm going to ask you to take the lips out of the equation by taking your pinky fingers and putting them in your mouth, and spread your lips wide. (Take a look at the picture at the top of this post to see what I mean.) Now make that [u] sound. Hopefully you'll be able to feel the action of the tongue, pulling back toward your velum or soft palate. Keep your fingers in your mouth for a second a slide your tongue into the [i] sound. Feel your tongue move? The high point of your tongue will move, like a wave, along the roof of your mouth to the forward point of the [i].
The next thing to do is to try to slow the wave down as you glide back and forth between the two vowel sounds. (You can release your fingers from your mouth now! Try to focus on the tongue still with as little lip action as possible.) I've made a little video of me doing just this.
Getting to know this action is really important to your ability to isolate your tongue, and, in the future, to make vowel sounds that are in different positions from your usual placements. By fooling around with the sounds in this way, you're becoming familiar with other options for your tongue, and that, in turn will lead to greater confidence to go to new places with your voice.
Separating the Actions of the Jaw and Tongue
There are two preparatory parts to this step in the warm-up, and then the "exercise" that brings those two components together. [Because the prep portions are so long, I'm going to post this as two separate posts.] To separate the actions of the jaw and tongue, first we're going to isolate the jaw, and then we'll isolate the tongue's actions, and finally, we'll marry the two into one complex exercise. We've already visited the action of the jaw elsewhere on the voiceguy, in the basic, intermediate, and advanced warm-up series. To jog your memory, or guide you to your first exposure to these posts, we did jaw basics, jaw swinging, and head and jaw isolating.
Isolating the Jaw
Our first prep step is to very gently work the jaw hinge. The idea here is to appreciate the complexity of the jaw, and to try to move it with ease and respect, not jamming it or forcing it to do anything untowards. Seduce it into loosening up a little. Begin by letting it drop, as best you can toward the floor, with your tongue relaxed in the bottom of your mouth. Sigh out on breath, and see whether it can release further, with your tongue tip touching the back of the lower front teeth. Begin to move your jaw up and down in very small amounts. Your mouth should stay almost completely open, so that your only beginning to close your mouth by a few millimeters, and then you open it again. (This action reminds me of when I've witnessed a dog place her mouth on a puppy to warn it to behave—not really biting, but warning that "hey, my teeth are here—you had better behave!") From the action, you want to slowly but surely increase the range of motion of your jaw on each little "nibble" to go a little further toward bringing your teeth together. Each time you open your mouth again, try to let your jaw drop, rather than pulling it open.
As your swinging your jaw, it is important to attend to your breath, making sure to breathe as you swing the jaw, and not holding your breath while making the movements. This is difficult, I grant you, but it's worth it. As the range of the swinging action gets to the full range of its motion, you should be moving slowly and carefully; only go to the point where your lower teeth are near your upper teeth: they should not touch. Once you've gotten to the full-swing action, begin to limit the range of motion on how far you drop your jaw, so that slowly but surely you are making the "chewing action" smaller, until it's as if you are "nibbling" a very small seed. Then from there you should slowly expand the range of motion once again until you're back a the full range of motion. The final phase is to slowly reduce the amount you are closing, so that you eventually are making small movements with your jaw open.
This graphic should hopefully explain the range of motion used in the exercise:
Though I am not certain about this, I believe that this exercise is similar to the work of Moshe Feldenkrais, and its biggest proponent in voice circles, William Weiss, from the University of Ottawa. (Note: I have not trained formally with the Feldenkrais technique, nor in any way with Weiss. I am sharing this because I believe that this exercise's approach is similar to the techniques presented by Weiss; I am not attempting to replicate or represent that work in any way.)
Tongue Possibilities
There are basically two major types of action for the tongue: arching up and reaching up. The first take the middle or back of the tongue to arches it up to ward the roof of the mouth, whether that be the pharynx, the uvula, the soft palate, or the hard palate. For these actions, the tongue tip stays down behind the lower front teeth while the body of the tongue arches up. The other tongue actions involve the front edge or tip of the tongue reaching up, either to the gum (aka "alveolar") ridge, or to other points like the back of the teeth upper front teeth, curling back to the hard palate, or reaching forward to the edge of the upper front teeth. We're doing to do a little drill of all these action/places, from the back to the front, and back again. We'll work our way through the arching actions first, and then we'll do the reaching actions, and then we'll reverse it.
Drop your jaw to begin with so you're doing all this with just your tongue. With your tongue tip behind your lower front teeth, arch your tongue back toward the pharyngeal wall, and then relax it back into the middle of your mouth. Do that twice. Then arch the tongue back toward your uvula (as if you were going to make a French trilled "r"), and then relax it back. Do that twice, also. Now we need to arch up to the soft palate, like you were going to make an 'ng' sound, and then relax. Again, do it twice. Finally, arch the tongue body up to the hard palate, as if you were about to say "ya ya" [jɑ jɑ]. Finally, arch your tongue up, again, with the tongue tip down, to the gum ridge, as if your were about to tease someone with "nya nya." (Do this 2X too.) Now, try to do the sequence from back to front, with lots of breath, as if you were whispering it: back-back, velum-velum,velum-velum, palate-palate, gumridge-gumridge. And now front to back: gumridge-gumridge, palate-palate, velum-velum, velum-velum, back-back. With breath, this sounds like you're doing a series of variations on "hyuh" or "huh".
Next step is to do the tongue reaching series. The places the tongue will reach to are as follows:
- edge of the teeth as in "th" [θ, ð] (interdental)
- back of the upper front teeth as in a dentalized "t" or "d" [t̪, d̪] (dental)
- the ɡum ridɡe as in "t" or "d" [t d] (alveolar)
- just behind the ɡum ridɡe as in "sh" or "zh"[ʃ ʒ] (post-alveolar)
- curling backwards, or "retroflex" (as heard in some foreign accents). (retroflex)
Whisper all these placements without making the sound associated with them. After each sound, try to release your tongue down, into the bottom of your mouth, behind your lower front teeth. This may be quite tricky, but it's really important in improving your awareness of your tongue and your jaw. I'll use those adjectives I put at the end of each of those bullet points above as reference points as we sequence them into a chain of sounds: do each one twice, as if you were saying "thuh-thuh, tuh-duh," etc.
Interdental, dental, alveolar, post-alveolar, retroflex.
And back the other way:
Retroflex, post-alveolar, alveolar, dental, interdental.
So far we've isolated the action of the jaw and the tongue. We'll continue the next part of this step in the next blog post, Separating the Actions of the Jaw and Tongue Part 2.
Tapping the Tongue
In the Advanced Voice Series, in step called the Articulation of L and N on the Gum Ridge, we explored the movement of the front edge of the tongue. Not only did we explore /l/ and /n/, we also played with /t/ and /d/, the other two consonants where the front edge of the tongue touches the gum ridge. Today, we’re going to warm that area up by tapping the the front of the tongue up and down in the /n/ place, but with no sound. I suppose that, if you listen really carefully, you might be able to hear the sound of your tongue slapping the bottom of your mouth, but it’s really faint…
Start by dropping your jaw. Very lightly bring your tongue up to the place where it would make an /n/ sound, and then slap it down behind your lower front teeth. Then repeat that action, faster and faster, tapping the gum ridge and slapping the tongue down. Be sure to keep your jaw still, and let the tongue action move quickly and directly. Breathe both in and out, as you’re flapping your tongue, and try to have the action of the tongue be light and agile, as if it’s dancing inside your mouth.
A more challenging action is to retract your tongue about half and inch from behind your teeth and try to continue the flapping action. Your tongue root will engage in order to pull the tongue back, so it will be difficult to maintain the speed. Generally this is what we want to avoid, but it’s good to feel that tension and understand how it works. And who knows: you could always use that quality for a character voice in the future.
Finally, put your tongue on your lower lip and then do the tongue flapping process, tapping your upper lip and your lower lip as quickly as you can. To most people, this looks quite graphically sexual, so if you want to do this without feeling foolish, self-conscious, or perverse, merely cup your hands over your mouth like you’re doing a big yawn so that no one gets to watch your tongue technique. (Unless you want them to… Might work as a good pick up technique if you were particularly good at it, I suppose…)
As a bonus step, you an move your tongue back into your mouth and try the tapping action on /n/ or /l/, trying to keep your jaw as relaxed as possible, and the speed of your tongue as quick as you can. Think light and quick, and sigh the sound out on a “huh” sound.
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Eric Armstrong is an Associate Professor of Voice and Speech at the Dept. of Theatre, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University.
Eric Armstrong is a Full Member of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the national organization of professional performers and coaches working in the English-language recorded media.
The VoiceGuy is a proud member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association.
The VoiceGuy is an Associate Editor of the International Dialects of English Archive.
