Our catch phrase is on its way.

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

Prior to my development of Jingles theory there was no term to describe the degree of mouth opening needed to produce the various vowels of a given language. For example, in the word “blinded”, the two vowels ay and u (or the “barred i” i if we are talking about England English or Australian English) can be described by using such parameters as “the part of the tongue that is used (front, center, back)”, “the extent to which the tongue rises in the direction of the palate”, “whether a vowel is nasalized or not”, “the type of opening the lips exhibit”, “whether or not vowel quality is affected by pharyngealization”, to mention the chief ones. However, no mention is ever made of the “distance between the upper and lower molars at the midline of the dentition” (“molar distance”, to put it briefly). Furthermore, the fact that “molar distance” is a function of speed of an utterance is not conceptualized and therefore not mentioned! More on speed control in tomorrow’s installment.

As a client is developing kerm target language allophonome, kerm ability to close kerm jaw by employing kerm masseter in the proper manner has to be fostered. Only in this way can the client gain the necessary expertise to produce nativelike sound quality for the language whose phonology kee seeks to master. Unless proper molar distance employment techniques are mastered, there is no possibility of a Jingles client’s ever attaining nativelike competency in producing all of the vowels of kerm target language allophonome correctly. In addition, kerm ability to deal with changes in vowels as a function of speed of speech production will likewise fail to measure up with the ability of native speakers of the target language to do so (more on speed control in Installment 214).

English happens to have three major molar distance zones: 1 mm (for the vowels u as in about and uR as in early) 8-9 mm (for a as in father and ae as in man), and 4 or 5 mm for the remainder of the simple vowels. Compound vowels often feature slight “molar distance movement”. For example, in the ay of “night” the a- portion is 8-9 mm, the –y portion is 4 mm. And if you consider what happens in “fire”, where the ay is rhoticized by the –R of U.S. English, the –r of England English, and the –H lengthener of Australian English, the movement is 8-9 --> 4 -->

1!

For advanced Jingles learners, all of the speech motor skills employment techniques necessary to pull off these sound juxtapositions in a nativelike manner come more or less “naturally” once the client has developed nativelike molar distance production techniques.

Steve Walker, Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

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