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*
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Date: 2017-04-02 11:16 am (UTC)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*