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Jingles "speed control" gets you started -- Your DNA does the rest.


Dear Fellow Earthlings,

Quite a few Jingles clients are puzzled about "Jingles speed control" training, wherein the client is expected to, first recognize -- and then produce -- renditions designed to foster kerm ability to produce nativelike renditions of "slow, careful speed" and "normal speed" speech production.

Since most Jingles clients are astute individuals, one of the more frequent questions they pose in this

regard is:

"Do you mean that English phonology has only TWO speeds??

No, definitely not. For training purposes only, it is easiest for the instructor and the client to work with only two speeds. Once a Jingles client's English speech motor skills are developed sufficiently, kee will be able to produce a full array of speeds ranging from slower than "slow, careful speed" to beyond "normal speed". Kee will be able to do this automatically, for such speed control is hardwired into our genomes -- and our phonomes.

Take, for example, the expression:

"Move forward quickly please. A piano being hoisted to an upper story window has just started falling downward toward you!."

Since time is of the essence here, we have to say, instead:

"Jump outta the way! NOW!"...

Back in Installment 261 (January 2, 2016), as part of a more general explanation of what The Jingles are, I noted that the Series A and B Jingles develop, among other things, speed control. I added that the Series C Jingles and the 366 "A Jingle a Day Keeps the Accent Away" jingles add further polishing to a client's developing speech motor skills speed control dynamics.

Subsequently -- 50 installments and 9 months later (on October 6, 2016), I released Installment 311, in which I used a short jingle from "A Jingle a Day Keeps the Accent Away" to expose my readers to more speed control information:

Day 104: Vic's trying so hard because he's striving to succeed.

Here I pointed out that speed variation in English was "not so simple as "slow, careful speed" versus "normal speed". I explained that "there are various speeds that can be employed, depending on the speaker's emotion, on the listener's or listeners' emotions, and on the situation at hand."

In late October of 2016 I resumed the explanation of speed control with the two-part blog packet of Installment 329 (10/25/2016) and Installment 330 (10/26/2016). In this two-part blog I focused on the inability of some non-native speakers of English to produce clear R/L distinctions within the context of their efforts to aim for fluency at the expense of a loss of accuracy in pronunciation. I strongly recommend that the reader take a few moments to go back and read (or re-read) this two-part blog at this time...

On January 12, 2017 I released Installment 365. In this blog I provided additional information about how clients can expedite their acquisition of more nativelike speed control techniques. I reiterated what I had said in previous blogs regarding speed control development:

" Although my instructors and I train our clients on how to say “slow, careful” Jingles renditions and “normal speed” renditions, there are in reality many different speed possibilities -- depending on our moods, our reasons for speaking, and our individual personalities and speed control leanings."

Just as our heads "know" how to remain level whether we are walking or running (unlike the heads of chimpanzees, whose heads are stable when any chimp walks -- but bob markedly when any chimp tries to "run"), our speech producing articulators and resonators "know" how to compensate for our efforts to control speech speed by doing what they are genetically predisposed to do -- while the chimpanzee, though capable of recognizing human speech -- is unable (due to the lack of any genetic predispositions along the same lines as those with which humans are endowed) to produce human speech sounds.

Steve Walker

Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

A chimpanzee runs on all 4 of its limbs. If a chimp tries to "run" on its hind legs, as humans do, its head "bobs" uncontrollably, precluding any impressive burst of speed. On the other hand, when a human runs, kee does so on kerm hind legs, kerm buttocks helping to keep kerm head from bobbing. The lack of humanlike task dynamics motor skills in chimpanzees is a function of the differences between the human and chimpanzee genomes.

Human speech producing articulators and resonators "know" how to compensate during a human's efforts to control speech speed by virtue of what kee is genetically predisposed to do -- while a chimpanzee, is (due to a lack of any genetic predisposition along the same lines as those with which a human is endowed) unable to produce human speech sounds.

"Jump outta the way! NOW!"...

might save someone's life here. However,...

--- "Move forward quickly please. A piano being hoisted to an upper story window

has just started falling downward toward you!"...

surely will not!



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

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