Interviewed 09/01/2009
This morning I was interviewed by the cheeriest morning personalities of Indianapolis on WIBC 93.1 FM radio; Big Joe Stayzniak and Terri Stacy. These two people (pronounced [pooewpl] by my foreign accent) have been great supporters through this ordeal.
Here is the sound file from this morning’s interview.
Acting to be Normal
I have had a few revelations this week in regard to my ongoing adventures with Foreign Accent Syndrome. As I was doing some voicing exercises to try and elleviate my foreign accent (or at least diminish it), this thought occurred to me. I have to ACT, to sound “normal”. I have to be fake, to sound right.
In order for me to reduce my heavily accented words with their often misplaced stresses and intonations, I have to “make myself” think something different. If I imagine that I am stuck in traffic and so I grow more and more irritated and to the point of speaking angrily, THEN I can say the word “people”. This is one of my hardest words to say right now. You would say it PEE-pul. I would say it PE-Pooo.
In otherwords, if I became a method actor and placed myself into a fake situation and really pretended, I can produce speech that is more normal. There are only two problems with this technique. Number one, I am not an angry person; and, number two, I absolutely hate lies. To me, this pretending is acting dishonestly and therefore a lie. That is troublesome. I realize that I am not “really” lying, yet it really does feel like I am being dishonest, so it hinders me a bit. I have to then talk myself into acting in my head in order that the sounds might come out more acceptable to the expectations of my Midwestern United States of America audience.
I think of my vocal singing work over all these years. Music directors would tell us to do some alterations to our regular pronunciations so that the audience would better understand what we are singing. Here’s an example you might understand. Great is Thy faithfulness, oh God, our Father — would be sung: GrA Tiz thigh FAith foolness; oh gah—dour Fath-er. Hopefully, some of you understand the concept.
In a similar way, I must now do a bunch of behind the scenes gymnastics with syllables of sounds to try to just speak without such a strong foreign accent. This week in one of the speech sessions I was to pronounce the two words “POOL” and “PULL”. However, when I pronounced them, they sounded pretty much the same. The two speech therapist ladies tried to correct my pronunciation of the “u” in “pull”, but I could not hear the difference. I could mimic her, but not just catch and apply the proper sound of the vowel. Finally, it dawned on me that the vowel sound should be closer to the sound in the word “pole”. So I said the three words, “pool — pull —- pole.” THEN, I got it. The vowel sound in “pull” just feels slightly more toward the sound I make in the word “pole”. So I use this exercise to hear the tiny difference and make it easier to pronounce the word “pull”. A lot of work for one little word, huh?
It’s not working right!
Okay, tonight’s great project just obtained the title of FLUB. I had our Patagonian Conure (parrot) on my shoulder and video cam recorded a wonderful update about all that has been happening regarding my Foreign Accent Syndrome journey. I attempted to send
it from the website I created it on, after viewing it for accuracy. . . and POOF! It was Gone!!!
It is now so late at night that I simply cannot continue. I must go to bed. Plus Oliver (the parrot) is in bed and he added that extra something to the video.
Therefore the irony of this post which started out to incorporate news mostly delivered by a nice little video, is now Kaput!!! As today’s geeks would say…”FAIL”.
It is funny that the very thing that I was reporting on is that my brain is not working right, my speech is still not right, and now, even my attempt at posting it on the internet is not right. I can take a hint; it’s bedtime. Just like so many of life’s other frustrations and attempts to stop me in my tracks, this is not a brick wall to stop me… rather… it’s just another hurdle to jump.
However, this hurdler is going to reenergize with some sleep before we go at it again.
Cartoon from http://www.runningromans.com
Interview No. 8
It has been a while since I last posted. Why?? Well, I’ve been incredibly busy with 4-H Dog Obedience and especially agility. I am a leader and am the coordinator for the Marion County 4-H Dog Agility Show at the Marion County Fair. So I was living and breathing fair preparation for the last 3 weeks of July.
However, I did continue to go to speech therapy in order to attempt to correnct my Foreign Accent Syndrome speech. Just recently they have increased the frequency of the sessions, so I hope to improve even faster.
Here is the radio interview I had with Terri Stacey on WIBC radio 93.1 FM in Indianapolis on Tuesday, August 4th.
Click here >>2009.0804 WIBC.08 SMALL to listen to radio interview no. 8.
WIBC Interview 090728
Today I was given a surprise phone call by producer Dan at the 93.1 FM WIBC, asking if Terri and Joe of the morning team could have me on this morning for a brief interview/ check-in. It has been three weeks since I was on the program and I have had a lot of people asking about why I wasn’t on the radio. I told them I don’t think it is “news”, but it is fascinating. So when I received the phone call, I readily agreed. Plus I just love Terri Lynn Stacey and Big Joe Stayzniak. They are two of my favorite people.
Here is the interview: 09-0728-WIBC-no07-sm
Basically they recapped a bit for those who had never heard me speak on the radio before and also talked a bit about the brown recluse spider bite I received recently. The funniest part of the interview was the very beginnning before I was even put on live with them. Joe was frantically trying to put back together Terri’s microphone which had a missing screw. I was cracking up!! Terri had a screw loose. Imagine?!
Sounds Like?— a Lot of Work
Today was a special day for me; I officially began speech therapy. It has been two months exactly since my speaking voice has changed from my normal Midwest farmer’s daughter dialect to one that sounds clearly like that of a foreigner trying to speak English.
Though I had my initial analysis with the speech therapy department on May 20th, they had only the original neurologist’s diagnosis of “disarthria,” which is just an official word for “slurred speech” often caused by a neurological problem in mechanically producing the sounds. However, my speech is not really slurred as much as “accented”.
My therapist today said that we will focus on identifying which sounds I am getting wrong and then correcting those sounds. She told me that I seemed to be doing a fairly good job of “catching myself” producing the incorrect sounds. There are just so very many sound combinations that are not coming out properly in my everyday speech that it is a LOT of work.
One of the sounds that I know I have a great deal of trouble with is the “TH” sound. The words “there or their”, “mother or father” are mispronounced as “Dar, mudder, and fadder.” That TH is a killer for me. When I try to slow down and really make my mouth form the sound it causes my tongue to tickle my lower teeth and lips together. It feels like when we used to make that kazoo sound by using a comb and a piece of paper OR when we took a very thick blade of grass held just-so in our cupped hands and blowing to produce that incredible buzzing sound like a kazoo.
Though I have spent the last two months working on putting the long A’s into words like table and baby. Now, the real work begins as I carry around a notebook and notate as many mispronounced words as I can. This phonetic journal should help me identify some of the biggest problems that I am having in accented speech. It is just that there are so very many accented words in my normal speech, that I get a bit discouraged as I wonder if I’ll be able to work my way back to my regular voice.
I got excited when my speech therapist said that she had worked with a lot of people with foreign accents… I suddenly felt like this was something I was not so alone in. However, then she corrected my thinking. These foreign speakers were actually from that other country, not like me. Unlike the Japanese lady that my therapist was able to help with r’s and l’s; my dialect is not from any one language so we don’t have the typical pointers like if you are from Sweden then you have very strong UU’s or French has a very nasal and broad A. My accent is literally “all over the map”.
So. . . where to begin? One word at a time. I remember two months ago when I first came out of the hospital I couldn’t say “yesterday,” without hitting hard brick walls between each syllable. Now, it is still somewhat slower that my old voice, but I have gotten that word to come out more naturally. One little victory with hopefully many more to come.
