Our catch phrase is on its way.
Dear Fellow Earthlings,
Recently one of myclients was having a great deal of difficulty trying to pronounce the word “travel”. He consistently mispronounced it as “tRaevuR”, the final syllable sounding like the final “er” in such gestures as “marker”, “inner” or “Steve Walker”.
On the other hand, he had little difficulty saying the word “trouble”, pronouncing it with the gesture in the second syllable: tRuh bul.
The reason why he was mispronouncing the final ul of “travel” was that his tongue, shaped as shown in Drawing 1 below, retained the concave configuration it had assumed to produce the ae gesture. The client’s tongue did not have sufficient nativelike speech motor skills development, upon producing the ae, to morph expeditiously into a shape enabling it to assume the configuration shown in Drawing 2, wherein the central groove of the tongue narrows and flexes subtly to produce the required ul gesture.
Since the gesture is basically the complement of the s gesture, with the central groove of the tongue very evident for but subtle for and the left and right sides of the tongue flexed and “quiet” for s but slack and slightly vibratory for ul, a speaker's has to be well developed so that kerm be produced spontaneously as a counterpoint. My client in this case was able to produce only a partially developed his insufficiently developed gesture causes him to produce an uR rather than an ul.
An unintended uR can quickly spring forth here, since the energy required to release uR is minimal (due to the lack of proper lingual speech motor skills development).
The key to correcting this deficiency is thus for the client to develop his s gesture further. In doing so not only s, but also its lingual central groove complement ul will develop – allowing for ul to be pronounced correctly even in such challenging linguistic environments as the one in which it must follow soon after an ae gesture.
Steve Walker, Earthsaver and Jingles Creator
© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.