In these two weeks, I continued to focus primarily on vowel sounds in my Australian accent. I also have been paying attention to reduced forms in the archetype, and trying to improve my fluency in the dialect and accuracy with the reduced and linked words.
Part 1: Vowels Development
Each time I practiced, I warmed up by going through the vowel chart on the Macquaire phonetics and phonology website to practice my sounds and warm up my muscles. I especially focused on the diphthongs to stretch my muscles, which tends to make my mouth rather sore by the time I'm done practicing.
For several sessions, I got away from the specific archetype and instead practiced listening to and repeating both words (vowel words) and sentences (Vowel sentences) from the Macquaire website. They had a good female listening voice for me to try and copy, although I think the accent of my archetype is actually slightly different from the one used here in this website. The Macquaire university uses a more educated, urban dialect. While my archetype is not quite as thick as the thickest possible "brogue" Australian accent, I think that it is somewhere in-between. I will probably return to these exercises periodically for further practice and warm ups.
Here is my recording of these sentences: Recording of Australian vowel practices
These are from the vowel sentences page, see link above. I'm doing pretty well with some of the sounds I think. I am still struggling with consistency in the distinctions between /ɔ/, /ɐ/, /ɒː/, /ʊ/, primarily because my dialect of English doesn't really distinguish between the first three and the /ʊ/ is different in Australian than it is in NAE. Also, my ʉ is just about right but still too tense, so I need to work on making that one more natural. Distinctions between the front vowels /e/ and /æ/ also need continued improvement.
Part 2: Reductions
My archetype speaker speaks quite quickly, and I have from the beginning been trying to notice and reproduce the ways in which she reduces the language. Many of her consonant linking/reduction strategies are identical to American English patterns, as are some of the vowel strategies. Quick, unstressed vowels become shorter, laxer and more centralized. Many syllables reduce to the schwa.
Here are some examples of reduced/linked phrases that I have been trying hard to practice accurately when I increase my speaking speed:
1) "I don't know who we were speaking to" --> ˈɑe dəʉ̆͜͜ ͜nəʉ̆ ˌhʉː wi:͜ wɛ: 'spi:kɪŋ tʉ:
2) "It wasn't the recorded message it was a person" --> əʔ wɐzn̩ʔ ðə ɹɪko:dəɾ͜ mesedʒ͜ ət wɐz ‿ə pɜ:sən
3) ..."that just needed a one word answer" --> θət̆ jəs ni:ɾ͜e ɾə wen͜ w̃ɛ:͜ dænsɛ:
4) "I've never been able to notice before" --> ɑev nevɛː bɪ‿næɪbl̩ tə̃‿nəʉtɪs bəfo:
Finally, here's my most recent performance of the archetype.
Week 7 attempt
In the performance of my archetype, I don't feel that my accuracy at hitting the vowel points has improved much. However, I am noticing that it is sounding much more natural when I switch over into my "accent voice", and this itself is evidence of improvement. My muscles are adjusting more quickly and accurately into the new positions that I have practiced (rather or not those positions are actually where I need to be), so while I may not be "right on" in my pronunciation, the deliberate practice is helping me develop some sort of approximation of an Australian accent that is becoming ever easier to produce.
In weeks 8-9 I looked more closely at rhythm and stress, which is what I will discuss in the next post.
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