Post-NaNoWriMo Update - March 30, 2017

[amruniel]

Total Words Written: 181.413

You probably won't believe it, but PLOT has been written today!
And I do mean the actual, real, story-furthering, setting-things-in-motion kind of plot!
What a... suprise :D

And depending on how much time and energy I'll have to spare tomorrow (on top of finally catching up with all your posts, comments and PNs!) I might even finish that particular scene...
I smell progress in the air :D


So, there's that, now on to other things:
For those of you reading this who hail from the UK, I have a particularly stupid question: if you're talking, what is your upper lip doing? :D
I know, crazy question, but bear with me for a second, will you?

To explain my weirdness: I'm trying to loose my Austrian accent and adopt a more British pronunciation. I'll need to get the Austrian in my English (more or less) completely out anyway sooner or later, and since I'll have to do a phonetic transcription in one of my exams at the end of the semester, I'll at least have to get a bit more British-sounding over the course of the next months in order to pass that damn thing (again! I've actually done this part years ago, but thanks to changes to the curriculum I'll have to do it all again now and with a way more precise, close transcription, much to my detriment *sigh*). So I'm currently steeping myself in everything British, and have changed my TV habits from my late-night-while-writing "watching" of CNN Int. to BBC World News... and while doing so, I think to have noticed that you guys hardly move your upper lip while speaking (at least compared to me while speaking both German or English). So, I thought I'll ask if you could confirm that particular observation? Am I on the right track here?


And another side note to those of you who have read my rant this morning - the slides are STILL not up. Not that it matters now, but... just saying ;)


And with that I'm off to bed. Maybe I'll manage to catch my targeted 7 hours of sleep for once tonight!

Comments

[gattodoro.livejournal.com]

Your question about lip movement go me thinking (and talking to myself, LOL!) and I (British) would say that generally my upper lip does remain fairly still. Notable exceptions would be for 'o' sounds (as in ostrich or Austrian) where both lips curve to form a 'o' shape, and 'oo' sounds (as in two or do) where the upper lip pushes forward.

I certainly think there is less lateral (side-to-side) movement than I would use if trying to speak Germanic langage (badly).

I'm going to spend hours thinking about this now!

[amruniel.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, thank you so, so much for your feedback!

So I actually might be on to something there with the movement (or not) of the upper lip. It's incredibly hard to judge for myself (I'm practically tone-deaf and this sadly also applies to picking up the sounds/tone and rhythm of a language), but I *think* that my pronunciation changes quite a bit if I consciously make an effort to keep my upper lip fairly still while speaking English. (And yes, I do speak to myself... and even more entertaining for everybody else, these days you quite often find me pacing up and down in front of the TV repeating whatever the news anchor is saying back to them *LOL*)

Hm, your reference to lateral movement is quite interesting as well. I dimly remember my first linguistics professor (a lovely British gentleman, I so miss him!) telling us that he used to demonstrate the difference between German and English pronunciation by sticking a cigarette into the corner of his mouth - with English it simply remained there, probably bobbing around a bit, but more or less just "there", while with German it would fall out after a word or two if one didn't make a conscious effort to keep it clutched between the lips.
Hm...

I certainly do think that there's a lot more movement of the lips while talking German, which in turn would lead me to the suspicion that you Brits do form your sounds differently as well. I suspect you actually use the cavity of your mouth and your tongue to form vowels a lot more than I do while speaking German (I think a lot of work comes from the lips here instead of utilizing the inside of my mouth).

(And I sure as hell have no control over my mouth, as my parroting back words has shown me... it's incredibly hard to keep my upper lip in check without sounding, feeling and looking as if I'm having a stroke! I'm pure comedy right now for anybody who's catching a glimpse of me practicing my pronunciation, let me tell you!)

Again, thank you so, so much for thinking about how you form your words! *hugs*

[silvan-lady.livejournal.com]

Damn, I'm sure I replied to this.

I wonder if there's any connection to the saying about the English having a *stiff upper lip* ?

[amruniel.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

That's *exactly* what Himself said when I told him about my observation.

(By the way - he's the one with the "could easily pass as a Brit"-pronunciation in our relationship, and he says he thinks he's moving his upper lip less when speaking English, but since he's nowhere near a "real" Brit, I'd love to hear a more well-founded opinion on my theory from somebody who has been born into the language, not merely adopted it ;) )

[silvan-lady.livejournal.com]

I was doing some research on that and came across this website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/

I loved that the last part of the url is 'pron' !!

[amruniel.livejournal.com]

Oh WOW!

Thank you soooooo much for the link! That certainly should help me further along!

(And I had a good laugh at the reference to phonetic symbols there... having to come up with exactly these renderings of words has led me on my quest to "sound more like a Brit" after all :D)

Hehe... and of course I did read the URL-ending as "porn" at first glance :D