voysspel - a simplified phonetic script for english

8/14/2019 Voysspel - a simplified phonetic script for English

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Voice-Spelling withVoysspelVoysspeling ith Voysspela friendly phonetic script to support best practice in frendly fnetik skript t spt best prakts inThe Makings of Memorable SpeechDh Maykings v Memrbl Spychwith some exploration ofith sm explrayshn ovhow speech-sounds are formedhw spychsndz fmd.A Voysbox Primer Voysbox Prym.byby

John J BaylyJon Jay BaylyThis paper is adapted from a Manualto accompany a course of workshopson the FFRAPP approach to the makings of memorable speech.While it can stand alone as an introduction to phonetic script,it must not be taken as a comprehensive guide to the larger subject.

The left-justified format of the text is designed to be read aloud.This layout helps a reader to avoid losing the placeby presenting one thought to a lineso that distracting hesitations do not interrupt important messagesin private study or in public performance

WHILE DEVELOPED IN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA,VoysspelADAPTS EASILY TO ACCENTS OFMANCHESTER OR MUMBAI, CAMBRIDGE OR CAMBRIA, CALEDONIA, CALIFORNIA OR KIWILAND.

IE MANCHEST MUMBY KAYMBRIJ KAMBRY KALEDOWNY KALIFNY KIWILAND.

AN

II CC OO NN TT EE XX TT PUBLICATION


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This paper is adapted from the longest of six chapters constituting a manualto accompany a course of workshops on the FFRAPP approach toTHE MAKINGS OF MEMORABLE SPEECH.

Enquiries about FFRAPP workshopsshould be directed to the author/presenter John J Bayly.

The FFRAPPapproach suggests3 .Precepts. expressed through6 ..EElleemmeennttss.. and 9 .Requirements. Master the Message

in the Mindbefore you open your mouth F1Fluency of Thought1 Why: Be Certain of your Purpose2 What: Make up your Mind3 How: Put it into your Words

Manage the Mediumthrough the Mouth:express your public persona .

F2 Fluency of Utterance4 Breathe easilyR Resonance5 Speak OutA Articulation6 Speak DistinctlyP1 Pattern in Voice7 Use Musical & Poetic devicesExploitthe Resourcesin the Auditorium:

every occasion is uniqueP2 Pattern in Place8 Adjust your Utterance &9 Adapt your Mannerto suitaudience, architecture & apparatus

Published by ICONTEXTfor

John J Bayly as Voysbox

2 Ruskin Court

Glen Iris, Vic 3146, Australia

email: [email protected]

Copyright October 2007 John J Bayly

All rights reserved.

This publication is copyright

and may not be resold

or reproduced in any manner

(except excerpts for bona fide study

as permitted by law)

without the prior consent of the author


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Voice-Spelling withVoysspelA SIGNIFICANT SUPPORT FOR EFFECTIVE PUBLIC SPEAKING

VoysspelThe Voysspel system of phonetic inscription was developed to support trainingn effective communication through the medium of public speaking

using the FFRAPP approach summarised in the Table opposite.Especially if complemented by some DIY training in Speed Reading

and use of a simple electronic voice-recorder,

voice-spelling is a particularly valuable aid to FFRAPPs central preceptManage the Medium through the Mouth

which focuses attention on the machinery of the primary instrument of delivery1.All public speaking is a performing art, even if it is also a business.

After 6 to 16 hours of work based on this paper, keen readers should :be able to

develop more articulate and effectively patterned speech for public use by

understanding the formation and diversity of speech-sounds,

reading phonetic script more quickly than live speech can be understood,

(thus hearing speech in the minds ear like a musician reading a score); and making readable records of speech as heard and/or intended for delivery.

Actors, auctioneers, administrators, politicians, preachers and teachers

play essentially the same vocal instrument to deliver their messages to strangers.

But no two people have exactly the same brand or model of this instrument

or maintain it in the same condition, or play the same tunes.

Each person is not only slightly different anatomically from everyone else,

but nearly all speakers of any language have some personal habits of speechthat allow trained listeners to identify them as if by fingerprints.

Phonetic inscription provides a valuable support to effective public speaking,

NOT by prescribing some standard pronunciation,

but by enabling recognition and recollection of the sounds of speech

from easily-made records that are silently and speedily retrievable.

While mastery of a phonetic script such as Voysspel or IPA isan uniquely productive aid for speech-performers,here is much more to the makings of memorable speech than any single tool or technique. This paper forms thebasis of only one among six chapters in a DIY manual exploring the whole scope of the FFRAPPapproach.


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thus helps a speakers to maximise effectiveness of a personal styleby adopting or adapting articulation best suited to a particular purpose,

whether that be to inform, to persuade, to entertain, or to inspire.

puts that central task in perspective by relating all speech performance

both to its authors intent and to its impression upon auditors in an auditorium.

was developed because IPA2 script is unnecessarily complex and strangefor people whose immediate interest is restricted to the sounds of English,

and the available alternatives are either equally awkward to write or print

or biased towards accents that few Australians use, or both.

Use of a phonetic alphabet focussed on the public use of English speech

has four advantages, as underlined by some often-unnoticed facts.

call these advantages Voysspels 4 ACES : A Awareness: Without some such record, few people are aware of habits

that make their natural speech identifiably personal,

and therefore possibly inspirational but also possibly confusing to strangers.

C Clarity: Speaking to strangers in public requires disciplinesthat are unnecessary in conversation among relatives and colleagues, because

unfamiliar speech patterns are easily and often misunderstood, and

public places can have unexpected effects on communication.

E Efficiency: It is much quicker to read words than to listen to them; soalthough audio-recordings are more precise in some respects,

unambiguous records of sounds in print or handwritten notes

can be understood more quickly and privately (and often made with less fuss).

S -Simplicity: Representation of many common sounds of speechis inconsistent and frequently misleading in ordinary English text.

More than 120 different letters or letter-combinations are used

to represent the 40 to 50 sounds used by most English-speakers. For example:

4 sounds of 1 consonant-character in cat city cello & special;

8 sounds of 1 vowel-character in dog do dont done worm worn woman & women;

5 spellings of 1 vowel-sound in women in breeches build myths;&

6 spellings of 1 consonant-sound in special schedule machine

fiction fission & fishing.

International Phonetic Alphabet; a comprehensive and widely-used standard, with some confusing variants in current use..Ofcourse, someone already proficient in the use of the IPA has no personal need for Voysspel - but may be interested.


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n phonetic inscription there is one-to-one matching of signs to sounds.

PA has over 100 characters, of which fewer than half are needed for English,

but in all versions of IPA at least 15 of these are exotic

and unfamiliar to English-speaking people with no experience in linguistics.

avoids most such strangeness, with few new symbols to learn.Other phonetic systems share some ofVoysspels aims.For example, the SAMPA transcription of IPA to ASCII characters3

has among many language-specific sets one for English,

n which it ingeniously allocates sometimes-surprising meanings

to familiar upper-case characters (capital letters) and punctuation marks.

Most alternative schemes devised by dictionary-makers and spelling-reformers

mainly rely on familiar characters or character-groups to indicate speech-sounds,

but they do not deal with the sound-streams of speech

within which it is normal for many word-ends to be lost or changed.

The only merit of the strange sentences in ordinary bold text in the box below

s that together they use nearly all the common English-language sounds,

with most simple vowels illustrated in the first line

and most common diphthongs (vowel pairs) in the second.

The three transcriptions represent my pronunciation inIPA, SAMPA and Voysspel :Sleepy Jim bled, man: bathtub murder. Charles got caught good through booze.PA sli:pi dm bled man batbm:d t:lz gt k:t gd ru bu:zSAMPA sli:pi dZIm blEd m}n bATtVb m3d@ tSAlz gQt kOt gUd Tru buz

Sleepy Jim bled man . . bthtb md'. . Chaalz got kt gud thr boozHow do you envision fishing here? We go my boy's way where fewer skiers roar.

PA hu dju envn f hi wi gu maib:izwi hw fju: ski:z r:SAMPA h{u d@ju EnvIZ@n fISIN hi@ wi gOu mAibOizw{i hwe@ fiu@ ski@z rO@ Ha d'y envizh'n fishing hy' ? . y go myboyzay h' fy' sky'z ro'Note that in Voysspel, by contrast with most phonetic schemes, nearly all indicators stand for sounds they usually represent in ordinary text;

modifiers (diacritic marks or accents) are used with very few characters; and

the script can be written or printed in almost any common font or style,

with no phonetic difference implied by change between upper and lower case.

While developed in Melbourne, Australia, Voysspeladapts easily to accents ofManchester or Mumbai, Cambridge or Cambria, Caledonia, California or Kiwiland.

"Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet" developed by international expert committees for an increasing range ofanguages using the American Standard Code for Information Interchangewith the objective of a standard machine-readableencoding of phonetic notation.


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is therefore easier than most phonetic alphabets to write or to type

for accurate and more readily interpreted records of utterances

(either as heard or as intended to be delivered)4.

Habits of private speech that can be confusing or positively misleading in public

nclude elements of conversational vocabulary, composition and diction.

t is obvious to most speakers (or their speech-writers) that whatthey say is vital,

(iethat words and phrases must be suited to the subject and the occasion)

but too few speakers give enough attention to howthey utter that vital substance.

Homely speech is rarely fitted for public performance just by raising the volume.

t is not what a speaker means to say but what hearers think they hear

that determines how various hearers respond to any public utterance.

Speakers need realistic assessments of the impressions their auditors are getting,

and self-assessment begins with some means of listening like a knowing auditor.

To be sure that your hearers get the message you think you are delivering,

you must be sure that you are in fact making the sounds your message needs.

For that you must understand how your mouth shapes each sound.

The vocal tract comprises throat, oral cavity (mouth) and nasal passages.

Much of the sound of speech is generated by large or small streams of breath

passing from the lungs and trachea (windpipe) into the throat

across vocal folds or cords in the narrow glottis above the larynx or voice-box.

Loudness is a function of the volume and speed of passing breath,

and pitch is largely determined by the tension of the vocal folds.

f some of the resulting sound consciously or otherwise escapes through the nose,

ts resonance, otherwise determined in the throat and mouth, will also be affected.

However, most vocal sounds are articulated and distinguished (shaped, for short)

by effects of the movements of jaw, tongue and lips on issuing breath-streams5.

Put most simply, they are made in the mouth.

FROM HERE ON, VoysspelSTANDARD INDICATORS (VSI)WILL BE USED IN THE TEXT IN A BOLD ITALIC FONT (eg bo ld).MOST INDICATORS WILL BE INTRODUCED IN THE TEXT BUTTHE TABLE AT THE END CONSOLIDATES REFERENCESTO KEY-WORDS AND NOTES.

4 The few Voysspel Standard Indicators (VSI) that are not directly represented on a standard western keyboard can readily beallotted smartkeys in most word-processing programs.5 Posture and breathing are also important; see p 14.


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Vowels are commonly described as speech-sounds made with the vocal tract open.

For practical purpose related to speech-performance, a trio of benchmark vowels

can be defined by three extreme arrangements of tongue and lips.

Fig.1A Fig.1B Fig.1CVOWELS ee aa & oo ARE FORMED BY THE UPPERMOST PART OF THE TONGUE IN ITS EXTREME POSITIONS.THE TRIANGLE MADE BY THESE POINTS IN EACH FIGURE CAN BE TRUNCATED INTO THE CONVENTIONAL POLYGONWITHIN WHICH THE TONGUE-TOP MOVES TO SHAPE OTHER VOWELS.LV&G INDICATE THE LARYNX AND THE VOCAL FOLDS ACROSS THE NARROWING AT THE GLOTTIS.T O & N INDICATE THE THROAT, ORAL CAVITY & NASAL PASSAGES CONSTITUTING THE VOCAL TRACT.U INDICATES THE UVULA AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FLEXIBLE VELUM (SOFT PALATE).

is the ee of the response to a photographers Say Cheese!.The jaw is relaxed and the lips are stretched into a broad grin

with the tongue high in the front of the mouth.

illustrates the formation of the long aa sound that the doctor asks for.The jaw is dropped, the lips wide open, and the tongue flattened

as far as is comfortable. (Doctors spatula pushes it further down).

shows the long oo of amazement (or perhaps of booze, or both).aws are relaxed, lips pout and tongue is high in the back of the mouth.

To develop consciousness of the processes of articulation

a speaker should pay attention to the tongues movement through this polygon,

with occasional excursions to the corners of the triangle for eeaa & oo.Many actors are familiar with the warm-up chant ofmee-maa-mooas a popular exercise to prepare the machinery of speech for performance.

n strong contrast with these most powerful vowels is the little indefinite schwa.

schwaThe schwa is the commonest sound in English and other stress-timed languages,

but is very rare in French and Japanese, for example.

t is what remains of any vowel that has lost its identity

by shrinking almost but not quite beyond hearing in unstressed syllables.


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Despite thewide range of spellings, it is the same characterless little sound

usually heard for the vowel (spelling here underlined) in such words as

about, demand, perhaps, surprise, figure and murmur.

Because it represents sounds that have been almost completely left out,

indicates it with an apostrophe . (The IPA characteris )The schwa is formed effortlessly in a relaxed mouth,

somewhere near the centre of the notional polygon.

t shares this location with the vowel of the first syllable in murmur,

a stronger but almost equally indefinite sound all too common as the hesitatinger.For this, the VSI is , introducing Voysspels use of a modifying grave accent.So the sound of the whole word murmuris represented in Voysspel as mm.f the tongue drops just a little from its neutral position for and ,we get the short sound in upor mum or putt (but not in north-English dialects).

For that, Voysspeluses the same symbolas does IPA, the up-arrowhead .

Fig 2. THE IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION HERE IS THE RELATIVEPOSITIONS OF THE INDICATORS. PROPORTIONS IN ALL THEPOLYGON DIAGRAMS ARE INDICATIVE ONLY, BECAUSE ALL MOUTHSARE NOT THE SAME SHAPE, AND PHONETIC CONVENTIONS ACCEPTTHAT THE SAME INDICATOR MAY NOT CORRESPOND TO EXACTLYTHE SAME SOUND FOR EVERYONE.

This is a convenient place to illustrate the

polygon showing the most relaxed

vowels near its centre and the three

defining extra-strong ones in projections

to three corners of a trianglemee-maa-moo.To become conscious of what your

tongue is up to while you speak, practise

thinking about where it is while you look

at this diagram while slowly chanting:

mee mee mee maa maa maamoo moo moomm mm mm mm mmThen repeat the chant, vowels only:

ee ee ee aa aa aa oo oo oo

t is convenient to describe the range ofvowel sounds in common English usage

by starting with the seven most common short ones.

n addition to and for the ubiquitous schwa and the up-sound alreadyntroduced, Voysspel uses the five standard-text vowel characters a e i o & u tondicate the vowels in words such as pat pet pit pot & put.

ee oo

aa


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t should not take long to get used to phaps and pt as VSI for perhapsand putt;but remember that some people often say praps (asVoysspel records it)andp rhaps is not uncommon. (r &schwa are closely related, as we shall see.)Next, consider the semi-vowels w and y.n words like wigand yacht (ig & yot) these two behave as consonants,but you can stretch them out until they sound like oo and ee respectively.So & y are also used as VSI for shorter versions of these benchmark vowels,as in weand you, which are voysspelt as y and y .6Longer or stronger vowels are often used before voiced consonants7 like d g & z,contrasting with shorter or weaker ones before their unvoiced equivalents in t k & s.Listen to yourself reading the triads book boot booze& rook root rude)

A similar relationship is heard in common soundings offit feet feedas fit fyt feed;and in gap gasp garden, which Voysspel indicates asgap gsp & gaadn,where

uses the French grave (graav)accent in the mid-length sound.VSI also use this accent similarly to lengthen the short vowels eo & u into & giving us w fe & mry for wear fair& Mary, pz pk & hs for paws pork&horse and ps hs & fst for purse hearse & first.We have seen that , and y have extreme extensions to aa oo & ee.There are no single-character VSI for extensions of or ,but each can be extended by a colon to : & : foroccasional further length.You may say that ee = y: , aa = : & oo = :.By contrast with the 5 vowels and 2 semi-vowels of the ordinary English alphabet,

we have now met 16 vowel-sounds: a aa i y ee u oo o e ;ee y oo

i u e

a oaa

FIG 3:18ENGLISH VOWELS6 although VSI can be inscribed in any legible font or style of handwriting, I find it helpful to use a rounded form for becausehe appearance of u oo suggests sound-progression as in buk bt booz.

7 Voicing of consonants generally is discussed on p11.


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showsall of these and two more arrayed in and around the polygon.

The very different order reflects the positions of the tongue-top and lips.

Acuteaccents on the new VSI & suggest the sharp short sound thatchocolate-lovers will recognise from the French clair and most Scots use in such

words as pay, they, fateand sleigh where other English-speakers commonly use

vowel-pairs such as ay & ey or ai & ei.These vowel-pairs are called diphthongs.

Throughout Fig 3,precise positions of VSI will vary with local and personal habits.For example, the oin copand the in cupmay be very like the in carp.n apolygon adjusted for such speech, o & would be much closer together.(Try prolonging kp tok :p without switching to kp!)Some speakers use a 19th vowel for words like good and book. Try pronouncing

these using something between and u , or even a coupled pair u that is not

commonly recognized as a diphthong.

Linguists define Diphthongs as.

Differences in the use of diphthongs distinguish many regional accents of English.n words like folk, slopeand snow, many Scots will sayfk, slp & snfor Australian fokslop & sno and Queens Englishfeuk, sleup & sneu;and where most Australians link a to y in fayt slay & pay f or fate sleigh& pay,many English people slide from e to i in feit, slei and pei .Two phoneticians ran out of bait while fishing together.

The Australian sliced some old meat, giving the best bit to the Englishman.

You can make bayt from any bad myt, but some English beit needs the best bit;Looking again at the polygon in Fig 3, you will see that

appears close to an imaginary line linking a & y, and lies between o & .Lines like this appear in Fig 4A as arrows representing rising diphthongsall of which have or y as their second element.n Australian English, the most common rising diphthongs are ay y oy aw ow .Key-words for ay and oy are obvious, including bay& boyas well as bait& boil.

is easily remembered by bowland flownas well as goatand hoe;but sadly, for the VSI a or there are no keywords that can be spelled with aw. and sounds are usually interchangeable without loss of meaning

as they are in about, clown, drown, drought, foul and fowl.


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y

a

o

o

y

9

Similarly, can usually substitute for ei ey y or ay, and for o e or eu.Such interchangeable sounds are described as being parts of the same phoneme.

y & y are rarely if ever phonemic faytindicates fate whilefytindicates fight!glide from stronger vowels to a schwa. See Fig 4B

The three most common are y as in beer here or raffia (by hy rafy), as intour lure & moor (t l m ), and or e as in yeah ere& air(y e))n English, the sound is rarely heard except in diphthongs and the name Mary.Fig 4A RISING DIPHTHONGS

y oo i u

e

ao

aa

Fig 4B CENTRING DIPHTHONGSee y oo

i u e e

ao

aa

are vowels with two 2 internal changes of direction eg fewer higherhire lower fy hy hy lo Always ending in a centring schwa, arefrequently sounded as two syllables. (See also r-flavour, pp12-13)

n all complex vowels, the sound of each element must be distinctly pronounced.

Loss of the second element can turn a fight (fyt) into something unwinnable,and a missing schwa can make a gung-ho Shire (shy) President seem timid!

The Vocal OrganIT IS NICELY APPROPRIATE TO SAY THAT THE MOUTH IS THE PRINCIPALORGAN OF SPEECH, AS THE VARYING SOUNDS IT UTTERS RESONATE ATMULTIPLE FREQUENCIES (PITCHES, MEASURED IN CYCLES PER SECOND),LIKE NOTES FROM DIFFERENTLY SHAPED PIPES OF A PIPE-ORGAN.A GRAPH OF THE COMBINATIONS OF FIRST AND SECOND RESONANCESFOR THE THREE EXTREME VOWELS (RIGHT) RESEMBLES THE PATTERN OFTHEIR FORMATION IN THE MOUTH:o THE FIRST RESONANT FREQUENCY RISES AS THE JAW OPENS; &o THE SECOND RESONANT FREQUENCY RISES AS THE TONGUE MOVES

FORWARD ALONG THE ROOF OF THE MOUTH.Hz indicates the unit Hertz; 1Hz = 1 cycle per second.

2nd resonant frequency (Approx Hz)

1e

e

(ApproxHz)

HzHz

2000+ < 300-

800

.

.>

300

HIGH LOWLOW

ee oo .

HIGH aa


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Except in the box on Page 3 comparing Voysspelwith other scripts,examples of VSI for all consonant sounds used to this point

have been single characters from the familiar English alphabet.

Fifteen of these familiar characters serve their most common purpose

when Voysspel uses bad fog huk laym nip sit rayv & z for bad fog hook lame nip sit rave&zoo;

and we have already metthe two semi-vowels acting as consonants

n ig & yot for wig& yacht.That leaves only c j q & xunused; we will meet them again shortly.There are four very common and four less common consonant sounds,

for which IPA uses exotic single-character indicators: x & .For each of these sounds, Voysspel accepts digraphs (pairs of letters)rather than obeying the traditional phoneticians rule of one character per sound.

Here they are in the same order as the IPA characters listed above:

h is the VSI for the sound in shipand rash.Ifs & h appear side by side in their individual roles in words like mishapthey must be separated by a hyphen or space: so not mishap but mis-hap.

The same rule applies for Voysspel s seven other single-sound digraphs:as in thin& both thin & bowth ,

h for the sound ofthin these& weather dheez & wedhas in thing& England thing & Ingland orInggland

h as some say whether& which& whistle hedh & hitsh &hislh for the sound in seizure& leisure syzhy or syzh & lezhh for the sound in Astrakhan, Scots loch& (surprisingly?) in Hugh& huge.khn loch Khyw &khywjh for the Greek gamma-sound in yoghurt, Arabic ghan, and perhaps aghast

yoght ghn &ghstTo avoid confusion about these digraphs, the hyphen rule produces, for example:

hot-hs on-go ing red-hed ka-hd bak-hand & fog-hnfor hothouse ongoing redhead cowherd backhander & foghorn

The hyphen rule is not needed for ch as Voysspeldoes not use stand-alone c,having k to use in catand s in mice as kat & mys,

and ch is the intuitive choice for chips, chops, chit-chatand all the rest,despite imports like Greek charisma (krizma) andItalian cello(chelow).


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n the Voysspelrendering ofhugeabove, the letter j appears as a VSI.This is one of four shorthand indicators for common complex sounds,

isted here with their IPA equivalents:

(IPA t) as in chch & ich &fixch forchurch& itch& fixture.= dzh (IPA d) as in ej for edge; q = kw (IPA kw) as in baqd for backward, &= ks (IPA ks) as in extr & stix for extra& sticks;

Consonants are shaped by the ways in which the flow of breath is interrupted,

and by whether or not the breath is voiced by the vibration of the vocal folds,

(whereas vowels are always formed in uninterrupted voiced breath).

below shows consonants arranged by position and manner of formation.

n split columns, those on the left are unvoiced and those on the right are voiced.are produced when the oral cavity (mouth) is blocked

for m by the lips, for n on the alveolar ridge behind the teeth,or for ng by the tongue meeting the lowered velum (soft palate).

are the sounds of breath popping out after temporary stoppage.

Most are paired as unvoiced / voiced bilabial p/b, alveolar t/d, & velar k/g;but the glottal stop! is sensed as a silence,occurring often unnoticed at the onset of an initial vowel,or obviously before a syllabic consonant, as in the famous Cockney bottle(bo!l ).

are frictional sounds of breath scraping through very narrow spaces.

result fromvoiced breath being forced around the tongue,(sideways in the case of the lateral approximant l ).

POSITIONMANNER BILABIALwith 2 lips

LABIO-DENTALlip+teeth

DENTALtongueon teeth

ALVEOLARtongue onthe ridgebehind topteeth

POST-ALVEOLAR hard palatePALATAL soft palateVELAR GLOTTALat baseof throat

tongue tip on or near thesepositions along the main roofof the mouth

NASAL m n ngPLOSIVE p b t d k g !FRICATIVE f v th dh s z sh zh kh gh h

APPROXIMANTh r yLATERAL

APPROXIMANT lTABLE1 ENGLISHCONSONANTSBYLOCATIONANDMANNEROFFORMATIONA valuable exercise in articulation is to read the sounds of all these VSI aloudfrom left to right, column by column then row by row,

feeling both the place of formation moving back from lips towards throat,

and the vibration of the vocal folds switching unvoiced utterance to voiced.


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In an involuntarily transition common in quick Australian and US speech,

a normally unvoiced consonant between vowels may be voiced,

as when tsswitch to ds, and a bit of better butteris heard asbidbedbd.

Vowels or syllables or whole words emphasised by volume or extension

are indicated by single or double underlining as inintfeerns orwot dh helConsonant sounds reiterated or sustained for emphasisare indicated by repetition of the VSI as in Voysspelor midday,withrrr indicating a trill.

Approximant and nasal consonants can occasionally be syllabic,ie be sustained to form a syllable without a vowel,

n such words as idle(ydl), rhythm (ridhm ) and sometimes known(nown)or by displacing a schwa in idol(ydl) bottom (botm )& nation(nayshn)[But a schwa may sometimes reverse these processes

by intruding before the consonant in a normally unstressed syllable (eg ydl ; orf such a syllable is stressed, instead of the consonant stretching (ydll )the schwa can stretch from to so that, for example,idle, bottomand nationmight be heard as idl, botm & nayshn.]

n rhotic dialects, r is sounded both at word-ends and before consonants,

whereas in non-rhotic speech, the ris rarely sounded unless next to a vowel.

For example, a rhotic speaker speaks ofa safer course as a sayfrkrs, while am identified as non-rhotic because although I habitually pronounce

the colour of paint as dhklrovpaynt with an r-sound reflecting the spelling pronounce the colour blueasdhklbloo with no r-sound despite the spelling.

Regional and personal idioms deal variously with the letter rand the r-sound:non-rhotic speakers frequently depart from their normal habit,

pronouncing a word-ending r when it is followed by a vowel,as in my colour of paint example above.

some rhotic speakers occasionally intrude an rwhere it has no place, egin such words as prz for pause.


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r is often sounded intrusively when not inscribed,especially linking a word-pair between terminaland initial vowels;such as when Anna OKeefe calls herselfAnrowkyf ;and

r can be reduced to a mere flavour as a schwaor disappear altogether when it follows a long vowel;

eg mourn(mn or m:n) or serge (sj ors:j).Not only the full sound ofr, but also those ofd l and tamong othersare often diminished or omitted, especially before other consonants.

indicates this with strikeouts such as d & t.Thus gaadn can stand forgarden, and btn for button,contrasting withgaadnandbtn with their plosively articulated dand t.[Note a progression from fully expressed t through t to ! egbotm botm bo!m ]

Deliberate or habitual lowering of the soft palate opens the nasal passage

adding nasal resonance to the utterance of vowels. Like IPA,

Voysspel uses a tilde ( ~ ) before or over a vowel, egin French un vin (~ v )or before a block of text contained between break signs | | or brackets < >,egin

~< rawnd haws >for round housein a strong Australian accent.mportant pauses may be indicated by one period mark per syllable-length . . .or by a note in brackets such as .

BEYONDTHEBASICS.The basic set of VSI described so far can be extended by users

in whatever way suits their experience, needs and habits.

Some extensions to the set of common IPA characters are illustrated

on the IPA website at http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ipa/tones.html.

these include and for upsteps and downsteps in pitchand and to indicate global rises or falls through a block of text.For variations in speed and volume, Basic VSI can conveniently beextended with familiar abbreviated Italian musical notations such as

acce l r i t f f d im etc.NOWITSTIMEFORPRACTICE!
http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ipa/tones.htmlhttp://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ipa/tones.html


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14EXERCISES FOR ARTICULATIONAs our focus here is the relationship of phonetic script to articulate speech,most of these exercises employ the standard indicators ofVoysspelscript to

encourage consciousness of the mouths machinery of speech, and

recognize significant distinctions between speech-sounds

so that personal habits of articulation may be recognised, understood,

and modified if and where circumstances of performance so suggest.However, the machinery of speech is not restrictedto the articulators in and around the mouth.Easy breathing is an essential pre-requisite for effective public speaking,so the exercises below include some preliminaries to ease breathingas well as some to prepare jaw, lips and tongue.n all these exercises, avoid forcing any muscles:Physical relaxation is a vital key to sustained excellence in performance,although a little nervous tension before taking the stage does no harm.

(The renowned and influential voice-coach Patsy Rodenburg, in The Right to Speaknotices a clenched jaw problem common among Australians and New Zealanders)

Feet comfortably apart, shouldersrelaxed, head on top of spine;

Breathe in deeply without raisingshoulders, feel abdomen expand, then ribsas upper lungs fill. Count 1, breathe out

Repeat #2 nine times, counting 1,2,

then 1,2,3 etc up to ten.

Drop the relaxed jaw until two fingers canslip between the teeth. Then yawn withouttightenng the neck.

1. Part the teeth with a thumb-knuckle;remove the thumb; breathing through thenose, repeatedly, from a slow start, thenwith increasing speed, close the lips firmly

over the open teeth.2. Teeth still apart, close the lips byraising the lower one to the top; restbriefly, then close them by dropping thetop one to the lower one (tricky for some!).

3. Teeth still apart, close and open theips quickly and often, firmly enough to popon opening.

4. Teeth apart and tongue still, grin andpout alternately, a making wider grin and

more forward pout with every repetition.5. Teeth still apart, lips loosely together,blow between the lips for a smooth rapidvibration.

6. Keeping jaw, neck and tongue slack,slowly move the jaw down and forward asfar as possible with closed lips.Tongue1. With open jaw and lips relaxed andtongue resting lightly on lower teeth, placea finger under the jaw to check that thetongue-root does not tighten as you

breathe out. As you breathe out, slowly atfirst then more quickly, move the tongueback and forth between the aa positionand the ee position. (Whisper to check thevowel positions)

2. With open jaw and lips relaxed, pokethe tongue forward between the lipswithout touching them, then withoutmoving it in or out widen the tongue totouch the inner corners of the lips; then

narrow it again to a fine tip. With nothingtense except the tongue, repeat faster andfaster.

3. Breathing through the nose, keep thepointed tongue-tip out and move it totouch in turn top-lip centre, bottom-lipcentre, mouth-roof centre, left and rightcorners of the mouth.So much for exercising the machinery!Now we concentrate on speech sounds.For a start:Go back to Fig 2 on Page 6 for the chant:mee mee mee maa maa maamoo moo moomm mm mm mm mm

then repeat with no consonants .


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15The following exercises are designed to bring out variations in pronunciationthat are sometimes indicative of regional or personal habits of English speech, and/ormay lead to confusion for hearers whose speech habits are different from a speakers.So precise articulation of all the sounds represented by the script is an important aim.

Nevertheless, it is also important not to be so extremely preciseas to disturb rhythm that may be significant for the meaning or the mood of a message.

Here, transcribed in Voysspelas I pronounce it, is some famous advice about rhythmn the entry for that subject in Fowlers Modern English Usage(2nd Ed, 1977).

READ THIS REPEATEDLY UNTIL YOU CAN READ FROM VOYSSPEL AT NORMAL SPEED.(PUNCTUATION AND SPACES HAVE BEEN RETAINED TO MAKE IT ALITTLE EASIER FOR NEWCOMERS .)Ridhmles spych or ryting iz lyk th flow ov liqid from pyp tap;It rnz with smoodh monotony from when it iz tnd on tw when it iz tnd of,prvydd it iz kleer stf . . . . . . .Ridhmik spych ryting iz lyk wayvz ov dh see,moving onw d with oltnayting ryz nd fl, konektid yet seprt,lyk bt difrnt, sjestiv ov sm l, tw komplex for nalisis staytment,kontrowling dh rlayshnz btween wayv nd wayv, wayvz nd see,frayz nd frayz, frayziz nd spych.IN EACH OF THE EXERCISES BELOW, READ EACH TRANSCRIPTION CAREFULLY,NOTING THE DIFFERENCES IN SOUND AND HOW THEY ARE FORMED BY YOUR MOUTHS ARTICULATORS

I intend to have a good time

i intend tw hav gud tim y intend t hav gudtym~|yintenthavgudtym|

Would you mind not doing that again?

ujmynnotdn dhad gen?ud y mynd not d ing dhat agen?ujmynd not d ing dhat agen?NOW A COUPLE OF TONGUE-TWISTING CHALLENGES.THIS TIME THE AIM IS TO SOUND EVERY SYLLABLE DISTINCTLY AND AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.FIRST, DO THAT SEVERAL TIMES READING FROM ORDINARY TEXT:THEN READ FROM THEVoysspelSCRIPT, NOTING WHERE YOUR NATURAL PRONUNCIATION DIFFERS.(THERES NO SUGGESTION THAT YOURE WRONG JUST REMEMBER EVERYONES A LITTLE DIFFERENT.)

HERES ONE FROM THE KINDERGARTENPat a cake, pat a cake, bakers man;bake me a cake as fast as you can!

Put it in the oven and mark it with BAnd keep it till Tuesday for Baby and me.

tkeik patkeik beikz manmy a keik z fast z yw kan.vn an mk it with Beeayby nd my.

AND ONE FROM W.S.GILBERTI know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc'sI answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradoxI quote in elegiacs all the crimes of HeliogabalusIn conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous.

ynomithik-histry . KingthzanSKaradoxynshdkrostix yvpritytaystfparadoxyqtinelegayiks ldhkrymz vHeelyogab lusInkoniks ykanflpkyliariteezprab lus.

NOW ALL THE VOWELS FOR THE SEQUENCE REFER TO FIG 3ON PAGE8Meany Mick made merry Mary marry Mark Marsden Booze suits good old Paul from upper Perth.Meeny mik md mery Mry mary Mk Maazdn - Booz swts gud ld Pl from p Pth

AND SOME CONSONANTS (TABLE1,P11)AND DIPHTHONGS(A,4B,P9)whip mop pub wham bomb web fin vine thin thine kneel teal deal seal zeal

gs 4 whip mop pb wham bom web fin vyn thin dhyn neel teel deel seel zeellash leisure royal sick sikh sing sag haglash lezh royl sik sykh sing sag hag

How do you envision fishing here? We go my boy's way where fewer skiers roar.

Ha d'y envizh'n fishing hy' ? . y go myboyz ay h' fy' sky'z ro'


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16THE TABLE OPPOSITE ILLUSTRATES THE BASIC SET OF VSIWITH AT LEAST ONE KEYWORD AND THE IPA EQUIVALENT FOR EACH.A MORE COMPREHENSIVE TABLE OF VSI IN COLOUR AT A4SIZE

IS ALSO AVAILABLE FROM VOYSBOX.THIS SPACE ALLOWS FOR NOTES ON PERSONAL SUPPLEMENTS TO BASIC VSI ANDVOYSSPEL TRANSCRIPTIONS OF NOTEWORTHY EXAMPLES OF ENGLISH USAGEFOR VARIOUS PURPOSES TO INFORM, PERSUADE, ENTERTAIN OR INSPIRE

NOTEYOURFAVOURITESOURCESOFEXERCISES MINE IS THE VOICE BOOKBY MICHAEL MCCALLION(FABER & FABER,1988) WARNING: MOST WRITERS ON VOICE USE IPA NOTATIONSFOR PHONETICS, AND MANY USE RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION(QUEENS ENGLISH) AS STANDARD.


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Basic VSI The Standard Indicators of Voysspel for sounds of English

with a sometimes noticeable but never extreme Australian accent.Equivalent IPA characters are shown where they differ from VSI

Key words VSI IPA Keywords VSI IPACONSONANTS

In the pairs, the consonant indicated on the left is unvoiced, that on the right voicedPlosives (breath pops out) Affricatives (scraping pops)choke joke ch j t dpet bet p b Nasalstale dale t d mile mcame game k g neat nsing ng

Fricatives (breath scrapes through a narrowedpassage) Approximants(breath passes throughbeside the tongue)

fine vine f v last lthin then th dh rain r seal zeal s z Semivowelsshow measure sh zh you y jheat h woo w whuge aghast kh gh Glottal Stop (back of the throat)when wh Cockneybo(tt)le ! . VOWELS

peace peas y ee * i i: to pool w oo * u u:pit i put u pet e port or :

parent pot o o or pat a Scot hope hate only the diphthongsare recognised

past palm aa * a a: apart putt pert

* Generally, the longer/stronger variant precedes a voiced consonant.DIPHTHONGS (two vowel sounds in rapid succession in one syllable)

buy, high y a toe ow w oubay, hey ay tier y

boy, hoi-polloi y oy : I tear e ebout, how w aw au u tour oo :

SOME MODIFIERS (VSI only)u: etc colon as vowel extender . . . one-syllable pauses

~etc nasaliser flnetik stressd t l r

(strikeout)reduces consonant or

makes it optional fontishn primary & secondary stress-hyphen separator (for consonantsor syllables)

Some Phonemic differences:bely > belly but bly > barely mery > merry but Mry > MarySome Non-phonemic variants:byorboy> boy hworhaw > how prityorpreti > prettywoworwworw> woe lnshorlunch> lunch wheorwh > where


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voysspel - a simplified phonetic script for english

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