Our catch phrase is on its way.

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

So many of my Jingles clients are absolute geniuses. All of those doctors, lawyers, financial specialists, engineers, academics, politicians, entrepreneurs, and scientists constitute a brain trust that offers great hopes for humanity – and for Earth! These people expect me to help them to develop their English speech motor skills application techniques so that they can compete on an equal footing with native speakers of English when it comes to speaking and listening comprehension skills.

Today I had the honor of teaching a certain Mr. T – who is scheduled to enter a doctoral program in materials science at Oxford University this coming August. Out of the 24 hours of Jingles training Mr. Tanaka has had during the past eight months, I myself have taught him only 2 hours, including one hour today. His progress has been remarkable – attesting not only to Mr. T’s intelligence and drive but also to the intelligence and Jingles training capabilities of my staff of Jingles instructors. Indeed, a total of 9 different instructors (including myself) have helped Mr. T move along the Jingles road to nativelike speech motor skills utilization competency.

It is good that I checked Mr. T today. You see, there is one critical aspect of his developing English allophonome in which a lack of proper development has become apparent. As I taught him, I noted that:

1) He often precedes his phonation with nyoidal throat sounds, 2) his subtle u gesture (as in the phrase “a small”) is often inaudible (It sounds like he is just saying "small".), 3) his word final p was always follwed by an unvoiced puff of air (as in “stoppu” for “stop”), and 4) his word final l and ul (as in “tail” and “humble”) were inaudible, causing a listener to hear them as “tai” and “hum”, respectively.

It turns out that at Mr. T’s present level of development of his “primary synergy” (“S1” – See installments 26, 97, 194, and 203.) is deficient. It should be at “3.3” out of a possible 3.5, but is currently at 3.0. Such a score indicates that when he needs to employ subtle, pitch change or tongue shaping techniques, his utilization of his abdomen is not up to the task. As a result, he is forced to “go to the throat” for employment searching when he should be “going to the diaphragm” instead. His diaphragm is not capable of aiding in the desired task dynamics here since it cannot be supported by an S1 level of only “3.0”. Such diaphragm support calls for a minimum S1 of 3.3 – and ideally 3.4 or even the 3.5 that numerically describes a fully developed primary synergy capability for a given language.

I have made Mr. T. aware of this deficiency. During the next few weeks, he will be working to raise his S1 from 3.0 to 3.5. I will be devoting more time directly teaching him during that period, for he will be heading for England in late July.

Steve Walker, Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.