Chapter 2 - Vocal Expression

Articulation | Table Of Elementary Sounds | List Of Words For Practise | Articulation Exercises | Miscellaneous Exercises | Exercises In Alliteration | Words Frequently Mispronounced | Vocal Defects

ARTICULATION

Essential to good speaking and reading is a distinct and correct enunciation. This may be attained by daily practise upon exercises in articulation. The student will discover combinations of letters difficult for him to produce and these should be practised over and over again until facility is gained and a uniformly good enunciation acquired. Reading slowly, giving full play to the flexibility of the tongue and lips, will aid materially in securing fluency and accuracy.

TABLE OF ELEMENTARY SOUNDS

Webster's Dictionary

Ā ale    ŏ odd   1 level

Vocal Expression

ē         event i   b          bib       s         see ĕ         end       c          accept  sh        sheepish ē         fern       ch        chin      t          tart e         recent   d          did       th        thin, this ī          ice        f            fife       v         revive î          idea      g           gig       w        wet ĭ          ill          gh         ghost    x         box ō        old        h           hat       y         year ŏ        obey      j           Jug       z         zeal ô        orb        k          kink     zh        azure

Standard Dictionary

a              sofa              ō glory                 cw=qu queen ā              arm              e not                     dh (th) the ą              ask               ē nor                     f  Fancy a              at                 ę actor                   g (hard) go ā              fare              u f ull                     H loch     loch ą              alloy             ū rule                     hw (wh) why e              pen               ū injure                  j jaw ę              added           u but                      ng sing e              moment        ū burn                    ņ ink er             ever              ai pine                   ń bon ê              fate               au out                    s sin ệ              usage            oi oil                      sh she i               tin                 iū few                    th thin î               eve               įū duration              ü dune ĭ               retail             iu feature                z zone o              obey            c=k cat                  zh azure                                    ch church

LIST OF WORDS FOR PRACTISE

Long Italian ä

calm           ah                  aunt                  half                flaunt palm           heart              launch               almond          haunt balm           father             laundry             gape              lava arm            suave             guard                laughter         promenade

Short Italian å

ask             grass          dance         master           surpass pass           slant           chant          draught          enhance grasp          after           class           basket           advantage cast            pastor         advance      staff               command

Coalescent â

care                share               there               chair                scare fair                  prayer             bear                ne'er                various spare               rare                swear              parent              ensnare ere                  declare            tear                 air                    pair

Coalescent ē

sir               were           earn            bird            serge mercy         verse          nerve          germ           versatile pearl           certain        thirsty         earth           learn first             perch          ermine        mirth           verge

Long û

due                   tune            suit                   stupid         lieu new                  pursue        Tuesday           neuter         tube institute             tulip            numeral            tumult         lucid dubious            duet            maturity            duty            tutor

th, The Breath Sound

bath               lath                oath            mouth               sixth thesis             truths             youths        apathy              thousandth amethyst        width             thwart         thing                 thing throw            thrust             thud            thick                 length

th, The Voice Sound

with            booth            paths             laths          hither these          there              tho                their          this that             scythe            smooth         thence       breathe father          northern         wreath          either         them

Id, lm, nd, bid, ngdst

bold           helm           land            troubled               bang’dst told            film             bend           doubled               wrongest sold            whelm        and             crumbled             hang'dst cold            elm             send           humbled              throng’dst

Syllabication

peregrination                   idiosyncrasy                    temporarily parallelogram                  instrumentality                 antitrinitarian atmospherical                  indissolubly                     valetudinarianism circumambient                 pacificatory                     multiplication plenipotentiary                 necessarily                      incommensurability momentarily                    disingenuousness             dietetically ratiocination                     lugubrious                       monocotyledonous chronological                   coagulation                     disciplinarian unintelligibility                   irrefragability                  deterioration consanguinity                   colloquially                      authoritatively incomparably                   trigonometrical                 inexplicable encyclopediacal               susceptibility                    congratulatory dichlorotetrahydroxybenzene

ARTICULATION EXERCISES

Practise slowly at first, then gradually increase until the various combinations can be uttered with great rapidity:

Also bl, br, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr.kl, kt.pl, pr, si, sm, sn, sp, spl, st, str, thr, tr.

FOR THE JAWS AND LIPS

e

Pronounce e with extreme extension of the lips sidewise.

Pronounce ah with the jaw well dropped.

Pronounce oo with the lips projected as much as possible.

Repeat rapidly: e-ah-oo; oo-ah-e; oo-e-ah; ah-e-oo; ah-oo-e; e-oo-ah.

FOR THE LIPS, TONGUE AND PALATE

There should be a sudden recoil of the lips in ip, of the tip of the tongue in it, and of the back of the tongue in ih.

Repeat rapidly. Also with ib, id and ig. For elasticity:

Jaw. Relax jaw. Move from side to side and forward and back. Repeat while singing ah.

Throat. Open the mouth as in yawning. Gently raise the soft palate. Practise will enable the pupil to contract the uvula as to make it entirely disappear from sight.

Tongue. Open the mouth, keeping the tongue flat, with tip lightly touching the lower teeth. Without arching the tongue thrust it straight forward and draw it back as far as possible several times.

Again open the mouth wide, and in dotting fashion continue with the tongue along the upper and lower lips. Reverse.

Fold back tip of tongue with the aid of the teeth.

Groove tongue.

Make lapping movement of the tongue.

To depress the base of the tongue, carry the point of the tongue forward between the teeth; then draw the whole tongue vigorously backward, as if trying to swallow it.

Trill aspirate r.

Trill vocal r.

Repeat running up and down scale.

Larynx. Raise the larynx to its utmost height and lower it to its greatest depth. Swallowing will help it to ascend and gaping to descend.

Lips. Open the mouth and bring the lips together quickly and firmly, aiming at equal pressure.

With lips tightly closed, compress the breath against lips and cheeks, resisting with these muscles and finally forcing the lips open.

MISCELLANEOUS EXERCISES

1. Reading and writing are arts of striking importance.
   
   
2. Twanged short and sharp like the shrill swallow's cry.
   
   
3. The clumsy kitchen clock click clicked.
   
   
4. A big black bug bit a big black bear.
   
   
5. Geese cackle, cattle low, crows caw, cocks crow.
   
   
6. Good blood, bad blood. (Repeat.)
   
   
7. A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
   
   
8. Bring me some ice, not some mice.
   
   
9. Make clean our hearts.
   
   
10. The old cold scold sold a school coal scuttle.
    
    
11. He sawed six-long slim sleek slender saplings.
    
    
12. Thrice six thick thistle sticks thrust straight through three throbbing thrushes.
    
    
13. Goodness centers in the heart.
    
    
14. He spoke reasonably, philosophically, disinterestedly, and yet particularly, of the unceremoniousness of their communicability, and peremptorily, authoritatively, unhesitatingly declared it to be wholly inexplicable.
    
    
15. Pillercatter, tappekiller, kitterpaller, patterkiller, caterpillar.
    
    
16. What whim led White Whitney to whittle, whistle, whisper and whimper near the wharf, where a floundering whale might
    
    
17. wheel and whirl?
    
    
18. I said mixed biscuits, not bixed miscuits.
    
    
19. Little ache, little lake.
    
    
20. Her age, her rage.
    
    
21. Thou bridPdst thy tongue, wreath'dst thy lips with smiles, imprison'dst thy wrath, and truckl'dst to thine enemy's power.
    
    
22. An inalienable eligibility of election which was of indisputable authority, rendered the interposition of his friends altogether supererogatory.
    
    
23. A ripe pear, a black cow, a fat turtle.
    
    
24. Ceaseth, approacheth, rejoiceth. (Repeat.)
    
    
25. A blush is a temporary eletheme and calorific effulgence of the physiognomy ocliologised by the perceptiveness of the sensorium when a predicament of unequilibrity from a sense of shame, anger, or other cause eventuating in a paresis of the vasomotor filaments of the facial capillaries where, being divested of their elasticity, they are suffused with radiant, aerated, compound nutritive circulating liquid emanating from an intimidated proecordia.
    
    
26. Not long since a robust, disputative collegian, his clothes of the latest Pall Mall cut, his carmine bifurcated necktie ornamented with a solitaire, his hair dressed with oleomargarine and perfumed with ambergris, his face innocent of hirsute adornment, but his mouth guilty of nicotine, informed a senile, splenetic lawyer that he did not pronounce according to the dictionary.

"For," observed the young man, with an air of research, "in your Tuesday's address you said that the sight of cerements sufficed to enervate an attorney; that a salamander treated for obesity with prussic acid and pomegranate rind was disinclined to serpentine movements; that in an Aldine edition of a legal work you read of a lugubrious man afflicted with virulent varioloid and bronchitis, for which a jocund allopathist injected iodine and cayenne pepper with a syringe warmed in a caldron of tepid sirup a malpractise suit being the result. By the way, you have a dictionary?"

"Dictionary? " replied the lawyer; "pugh! It is a granary from which the pronunciation fiend fills his commissariat with orthoepic romances and vagaries which, to him, grow into a philologic fetish; and this fetishism finds outward expression in a supercilious ostentation of erudite vacuity."

Nothing daunted, the young man continued: "You said, 'According to precedent it was obligatory upon him to plait his hair as his Nomad parents had done, but instead he, precedent to stepping under the mistletoe, indulged in fulsome praise of himself, hoping thereby to induce a favorite girl to join him. But she, being averse to undergo an ordeal so embarrassing, refused; whereupon his features became immobile with chagrin/ This is a verbatim quotation. You sometimes consult a dictionary ? "

"Young man," retorted the lawyer, his aquiline nose quivering with derisive disdain, "I have no use for a dictionary."

"Pardon me, your pronunciation indicates the contrary; thus, in your peroration this occurs: 'An incognito communist, being commandant on the frontier, in one of his hunting expeditions came upon an Indian, who, to the accompaniment of the soughing wind, was softly playing a flageolet, for the purpose of quieting a wounded hydrophobic Bengal tiger, which, penned up in a hovel, was making hideous grimaces.

" 'The Colonel's companion, a comely but truculent Malay, acting as seneschal or pursuivant, suggested houghing the rampant animal, or giving it some dynamite, morphine, and saline yeast.

" 'A noose was adjusted, and the nauseous dose administered, whereupon the combative tiger, thus harassed, coming in premature contact with a dilapidated divan, bade adieu to things sublunary/ You have a dictionary?"

The old man, angered at the raillery of this question, and at the cherubic smile of superiority with which it was asked, launched forth in an objurgatory tirade, insisting that he did not regard himself sacrificable to the juggernaut of orthoepy.

EXERCISES IN ALLITERATION

1. Amos Ames, the amiable aeronaut, aided in an aerial enterprise at the age of eighty-eight.
   
   
2. Benjamin Bramble Blimber, a blundering banker, borrowed the baker's birchen broom to brush the blinding cobwebs from his brain.
   
   
3. Caius Cassius contrived concatenating circumstances causing chivalrous Caesar's citation.
   
   
4. Deaf doddering Daniel Dunderhead dictated difficult didactic disingenuousness.
   
5. Extraordinary and excessive irritability was exhibited by these execrable people.
   
   
6. Flags fluttered fretfully from foreign fortifications and fleets.
   
   
7. Gibeon Gordon Grelglow, the great Greek grammarian, graduated at Grilgrove College.
   
   
8. Henry Hingham has hung his harp on the hook where he hitherto hung his hope.
   
   
9. Imbecile Irwin indef atigably inculcated inveterate isolation. Incomprehensible incommunicability.
   
   
10. Jasper, the jolly juror, justly joked John, the journalist.
    
    
11. Kemuel Kirkham Kames cruelly kept the kiss that his cousin Catherine Kennedy cried for.
    
    
12. A lily lying all alone along the lane.
    
    
13. Morose mariners and magnanimous men make much magnetism.
    
    
14. Nine neutral nations negotiated numerous nuptials.
    
    
15. Obstructionists and oppressors often opposed operations.
    
    
16. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Now if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where are the pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?
    
    
17. Querulous quips were quoted by quiet Queenie Quilp.
    
    
18. Round the rough and rugged rocks the ragged rascals rudely ran.
    
    
19. She sells sea-shells; shall he sell sea-shells?
    
    
20. Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle sifter, in sifting a sieve full of unsifted thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb. Now if Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle sifter, in sifting a sieve full of unsifted thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb, see that thou, in sifting a sieve full of unsifted thistles, thrust not three thousand thistles through the thick of thy thumb. Success to the successful thistle sifter.
    
    
21. Unwise, unjust and unmerciful university usages.
    
    
22. Vivian's vernacular gives vividness to every verse.
    
    
23. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck would chuck wood?
    
    
24. Xanthians Xebeced xantic xylographers.
    
    
25. Yelled and yelped the yeoman's youngsters in yesterday's yacht and yawl.
    
    
26. Zig-zaged zinc zones and zithers.

WORDS FREQUENTLY MISPRONOUNCED

Abdomen          adieu                        alternate              associate Abject               adult                         amenable            athlete accept               advertisement            aniline                 attorney acclimate           again                         apparatus           auxiliary acumen             aggrandizement          apparent             awry adamantine        ailment                       aquiline                   address             aUied                        area                        adept                 allopathist                 asphalt                  bade                  betroth                      blackguard         brigand banquet             bicycle                      blouse                 bronchitis bayonet              bijou                        bounteous           burlesque because              biography                bouquet                  been                   bitumen                   bravado                  calisthenics         chasm                      combatant            contents calm                   chasten                    commandant        contrary candelabrum       chastisement            comment              contumely canine                 clangor                    communist           conversant carmine              clematis                    compeer              coterie cayenne              clique                       composite            courtesy cello                   coadjutor                  condolence             cerement            cognomen                 consummate           chalybeate          column                      contemplate            daguerreotype    depot                        direct                  dolorous data                    depths                      disciplinary          domain decade               designate                  discourse             due decadence          desperado                disputant             duke defalcate             despicable                divan                  duty deficit                 desuetude                  docile                     demoniacal         detail                         dog egregious            envelope                    examine             exploit elongate              epoch                        excess               exponent encore                equitable                    exemplary          exquisite enervate             escapade                   exigencies           extant enquiry               every                         exist                       facade                feline                         fiasco                  forensic facet                   feminine                    fidelity                 fragmentary factory                ferocity                     finance                frontier faucet                 fertile                        financier                  fecund                fetish                        flageolet                  gape                   gigantic                     granary               grovel generic               God                          gratis                  gymnasium genial                  gondola                    grievous                  genuine               government               grimace                  harass                 hideous                     hostage              hygiene hearth                 homage                    hover                  hypocrisy height                 homeopathic             humble                   heinous               horizon                     humor                     illustrate              incentive                   inexplicable         interpolate imbecile              incomparable            inquiries              intrinsic impious               indefatigable             integral                iodine implacable          indisputably              interested             irrefragable importune           indissoluble               interesting Jocose                Jocund                     Juvenile                  kept                    kiln                          kinetics lamentable          legend                      listen                    lugubrious larynx                 lenient                      lithography           lyceum laugh                  lettuce                      livelong learned               lineament                  lozenge magazine            mediocre                 mobile                  mustache manufactory       mineralogy               molecule maritime             mischievous             municipal matinee              misconstrue              museum nascent               nauseate                   nepotism             niche nicotine national               necessarily               neuralgia              nomenclature nature                 nephew                    new oasis oaths         obligatory                  oleomargarine     orotund obesity               occult o'er                 orchid                 orthoepy object                office                         ordeal                 oust objurgatory        often                          ordnance                                                            ornate palmistry            piquant                      premature            protestation patriotism           placard                      prestige               puissance patron                plagiarism                  pretense              pyramidal patronize            pomegranate             primarily peremptory        predecessor               progress piano                 preface                      proscenium quadrupedal      quiescent                   quinsy                  qui vive radish                 reconnaissance          reptile                  rhythm rapine                 recreant                    requiem               robust receptivity           refutable                   research              romance recess                 regime                      resource              route recluse                remonstrate              respite salutatory            serpentine                sonorous             squalor sapient                simultaneous            sophistry              succinct satiety                 sinecure                   soporific              suggest schedule             sirup                        sovereign             suite secretary             sojourn                    splenetic              supererogatory senile                  solitaire                    spontaneity          superfluous tenet tepid           toward                    tribune                  tyrannic testimony            transact                   trilobite topography         tremendous             truculent                           tribunal                    truth umbrella             untoward                 usage                    usurp- uninteresting       urbanity vagary                veracity                   version                  virulent Vaseline             verbatim                  via vicar                 visor Vaudeville          verbose                   victory Vehement           versatile Which                with                         wrath                      wreak whistle               wound xylophone youth zenith                   zodiacal                     zoology

VOCAL DEFECTS

The defects most commonly found in untrained voices are breathiness, throatiness, and nasality. The following exercises, if practised persistently, will remedy these defects:

Breathiness. This is caused by allowing breath to escape unvocalized. The remedy lies in applying to the vocal cords just the quantity of breath required to produce a given tone. It should be noted that clear and robust sounds depend upon breathing gently.

1. Inhale deeply. Exhale on singing ah. Apply the air very gently to the vocal cords, hold back the unused breath and aim to increase the purity of tone.
   
   
2. Count one to ten in a loud whisper, inhaling after each number. Repeat with half breath and half voice. Repeat with pure tone. Project into the distance.
   
   
3. Practise the following in pure, clear-cut voice: hup, he, ha, haw, hah, ho, hoo.

Throatiness. This defect arises from smallness of throat or rigidity. First, relax the throat muscles and practise exercises for depressing the root of the tongue, raising the soft palate and lowering the larynx. Practise the various tongue exercises, keeping the lips perfectly still. Sing oo-oh-ah in well-projected voice. Sing le, la, law, lah, lo, loo.

Nasality. When the vocal current is allowed to escape through the nostrils, a nasal tone is produced. To avoid this, the soft palate must be well raised and the tone projected directly towards the lips.

1. With soft palate raised sing ah and oh in pure projected tone.
   
   
2. With the thumb and first finger gently close the nostrils and pronounce several times with the utmost nasality: "O 'precious hours." Keep the nostrils closed and try to repeat with a pure tone. Repeat with nostrils open.
   

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