I’m told that the symbol for the written Chinese character for perseverance is a child in a house; this is because Chinese children spend so many hours in a house practicing their writing and schoolwork.

Perseverance is required when using our speaking mechanism to learn the pronunciation and sound system of another language.

An Asian-native friend of mine, Lesley, learned to persevere when she initially began working with so many Americans. She purposely chose every opportunity to speak in English many hours a day with native English speakers in order to become more easily understood.

She told me that she recorded her telephone conversations and then repeatedly analyzed them based upon stress patterns, speaking speed and clarity.  She had other speakers of English help her analyze them as well.

Let’s start with SPEAKING SPEED: THE Most IMPORTANT!!!

Although it sounds as though most North Americans speak at dizzying speeds, they then listen in comprehensible sound bites. If they do not understand what someone says, words or parts of words are ignored. Even to other North Americans!!

Therefore, a speaker must …..S-L-O-W   D-O-W-N……. in order to be understood.

And there is a difference between STRESSED & Non-Stressed words. This is true even for when the speaker is grammatically accurate.

Using high content words, as many Science, Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) professionals do, magnifies the issue. Because English is a stressed language, words with higher meaning [Content words] often take a greater amount of time/stress than lower meaning words [Function words].

Example:  This sentence takes only 5 seconds with many smaller [Function] words.    She can come practice on Mondays as long as she has finished all of her homework.

Example:  This sentence –with fewer words- 5 seconds with high meaning & stress [‘Content] words.    The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.

Mandarin or “Chinese” is a stress-timed language as is English.  One of the differences is that there are very few ‘Content’ Chinese words with multiple syllables and consonant blends as there are in English.

How to practice? Find an Accountability Partner who speaks English very well. Remember the 10,000 Hours Practice rule.

Next blog: Some practice words and lessons.

We recall that the NBA /“N – B – A”/ (National Basketball Association) had a “Lockout” (owners began a work stoppage when players and owners couldn’t agree on a contract) from July 1st to December 8th, 2011.

Apparently this allowed a little known player to emerge into the spotlight out of the “D” Leagues /”Leegs”/ (NBA Development League). Jeremy Lin is a new recruit to the New York Knicks and the first American player of Chinese descent to play in the NBA.

Jeremy is excelling as a point guard and he excels at ‘assists’: 89 points total in his first three games with the New York Knicks.

According to CBS (C – B – S), the Harvard Economics graduate (gra-ju-eht) “scorched Kobe (Ko-bee) Bryant (Bri-ant) and the Lakers” last Friday”, February 10th.

Did Jeremy have an athletic scholarship to Harvard? No. Did he receive any athletic scholarships for any college? No. Yet, at Harvard he had the opportunity to play for an I-vy League /Leeg/ school and maintain a 3.01 Average in economics.

Not only does he understand discipline and perseverance, he is very well educated, knowledgeable and has an eye for fast moving opportunities.

How about you? Have you noticed opportunities to improve your pronunciation and knowledge of sports in this post?

Now, go talk about Jeremy Lin and the New York Knicks with folks who speak Standard English as a first language. Perseverance works.

Jeremy Lin Career-high 38pts vs Lakers

Our listeners and readers are overloaded with information. They expect to be given short, pointed and strategic information.  This means we must strategically prepare what we are planning to say.

Linguists indicate that the average English sentence is between 2.3 words (“Valley Girl” study) and 14.3 words (average adult). Doing the math, that’s an average of 8 words per sentence.

On Twitter, at about 4.5 characters per word (+ 1 space per word), you’d be allowed about 3 sentences. On LinkedIn, it would be two. Not easy. Try it!

Spoken Messages

An Elevator Speech – A strategic message – is usually one minute.

Most listeners readily understand us when we speak at an average of 125 words per minute. When we go faster or have an accent, our listeners must either screen out parts of the message or struggle to understand. That means that we have few than 10 short sentences, including pauses, to get our message across.

The basic format follows the Toastmasters International tenet of:

• “Tell them what you are going to tell them”: two sentences.
• “Tell them”: four to five sentences
• “Tell them what you told them”: two to three sentences
• “Tell them what action you want: the ‘call to action’: two sentences.

If we craft what we say before we say it and keep it within a select number of words and minutes, we will be better received and understood by our listeners.

We’ll be much more likely to get what we want when we use the K.I.S.S. method.

Example:   This is the Winning Pitch at the MIT Global Start-Up Workshop:

For more help with developing your elevator speech skills, contact your local Toastmasters, International club. www.toastmasters.org.  For those who want help with speaking better Business English and presentation skills, contact me at www.AccentManagementGroup.com

You have heard this on TV and in daily interactions.

“How are you” becomes “Hau-war-yu” and has a singing quality.

Another type of linking is in association with “word reductions”.

“Where Did you…” becomes …/Di-ju../  and “What’s your leadership…” becomes /..wha-chur/.

In a TED Talk by Simon Sinek on “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” the first sentence is linked to sound like: “How’deh’you-weksplain whenthingz-don/go-azwee-a’sume…orbedder….”

Mr. Sinek merges “How do you” as /How’deh’you/.  He does maintain a professional speaking style keeping clarity of appropriate vowel production with a clear /u/ in “you” instead of saying /How’deh’yah/ .

A common practice that can be heard in an example TED Talk is changing the pronunciation of a two-syllable word with a medial voiceless consonant so that the final syllable is distressed as in ‘or better’ being pronounced as “..orbedder”.  In other words, the motor speech system often hunts for “efficiency” of movement.

This is true in all sound systems, even when one “speaks the Kings English”. Listen to Sir Ken Robinson, who speaks a very crisp King’s English, as he says “Why wu’ju lower them….” When giving his RSA Animate speech.

To learn about having more success speaking and presenting in Business English, contact Phyllis at p.thesier@AccentMgtGroup.com

Many Asian/ East Asian speakers find themselves omitting unstressed middle syllables. Omitting them makes the listener have to work harder, sometimes missing other words as they process what was said.

A few distorted words and your listeners stop listening for an extended period or completely.  Ouch….

An example from a recent Mim’s Bits article in Technology Review, http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26403/, uses multi-syllables words with low stress patterns:

“Information was just a click away, disconnected and segregated processes were consolidated and made whole...”.

When spoken, issues that may arise with the sentence include omitting de-stressed syllables. For example:

o        /Dis-connected/ erroneously becomes “Dis-nek ted”;

o        /Se-greh-gated/ shortened to “se-gra-ted”;

o        /Pro-ces-sehs/ said as “Process – ” with the last de-stressed syllable omitted;

o        /Con-SO-lih-DA-ted/ said incorrectly as “con-SO — DA-ted”.

In addition to omitting the unstressed /eh/ sound, speakers may omit another consonant in the middle of  the word. Example: /Dis-con-nec-ted/  to  /Dis –  neh ted /

The listener is doubly confused.

In order to help correctly pronounce these types of words, have your mentor help you draw up a list of five words that have four to five syllables, then:

1)  Focus on slowly pronouncing all of the syllables of one word at a time with the correct consonant cluster sounds, rhythm and stress. Repeat 5 times.

2)  Record your efforts, listening and refining until you can say the word correctly 5 times in a row.

3) Build phrases to sentences with one multi-syllable word, record and practice until correct.

4) EXAMPLE: Special significance: It has special significance. The book has special significance to me. “Special siG-NI–feh-cance”.: “It has special siG-NI–feh-cance”. “The book has special siG-NI–feh-cance to me”.

Accent Management Group offers, at no cost, initial telephone consults. Call today at (920) 458-2767 to set up an appointment.