Introduction to Accents 3: Placement

Placement refers to the sensation of where the sound "lives" in the mouth, which can commonly lead to a mouth posture that helps with an accent.

This is part 3 of 6 videos that offer you an introduction to learning accents.

Part 1: Accent vs Dialect vs Idiolect
Part 2: Phonetics
Part 3: Placement
Part 4: Intonation
Part 5: Helpful Hints
Part 6: Prioritizing Learning Accents

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Sound Placement for Accent Learning

I wanted to talk just a little bit about the idea of Placement, the sense of where the sound lives in your mouth. Or another way that some people may talk about it is a sense of mouth posture.

So placement is sort of a BS concept. There's there's sort of no such thing as placement. You don't have to put it in a certain place, but that concept tends to help a lot of people to understand a lot that that gets them further with an accent.

So, I do find it useful to talk about the sense of what the placement is.

For example, for most Americans in their speech, the placement is actually sort of in the middle of the mouth ideally, or for a lot of people it sort of drops back into the throat and drops into the back of the tongue. This is a very common thing.

In addition to that, the placement can vary in other parts of the US too.

For example, in the New York Brooklyn sound, it'll tend to feel like it's more down in the jaw, like the lower lip, almost a fat lower lip can tend to help with a sense of where the Brooklyn placement is, whereas more the Bronx placement tends to be higher in the mouth, more of a sense of it being up near the top. So, there's a difference in the height of it and also front versus back.

Sometimes it's useful to talk about sort of the width of it, where you may feel the sensation of it. For example, the Brooklyn one can feel like it's fat and low in the jaw. Whereas the Bronx one, it does seem to help people to think of it as being high and flat and wide and not quite so pointy.

Whereas RP or Standard British, Received Pronunciation, will be a high accent as well, but it will tend to be a much thinner accent. So the RP tends to be much more up here and the sensation of it being very narrow almost as though you show your upper teeth can be a helpful sense of reaching the RP. whereas dropping it more down into the jaw often times helps people with Cockney.

Cockney & Aussie Accents

But one thing that I find that helps people with Cockney in addition is a sense of really opening up the back and it's a sound that we tend to use for doing words in RP and Cockney like "not god lot" and it's that rounded awh sound. So if you hold on to that, that helps you with the Cockney sensation of the placement being open at the back.

As opposed to what you'll tend to experience is more of a sense of it sort of flattening out, not quite as open when you go to Australian, especially broad Australian. And there's often times a sensation in that that it's very nasal. And so that flattening in the back oftenimes gives people that sensation of the nasality without going sound nasal. It's this sense of it maybe not being quite so open.

So sometimes that shift like Cockney versus Australian sound differences is not that significant. There are some sound differences but there's a lot in common. So it's really common for people to slip from one to the other when they're working on them or working on Cockney slipping into Australian for example.

So that sensation of placement sometimes helps people to make the difference.

So the sense of placement is where the sound lives in the mouth and some people might describe it as mouth posture or oral posture.