AccentHelp Blog

How to Speak with Thick Vocal Folds (Chest Resonance)

Recently I shared a vlog post about how to speak with thick vocal folds (as opposed to thin vocal folds) which increases chest resonance. A follow-...

Devoicing for Emphasis

I commented to a client about a tendency to devoice when emphasizing a word, and I thought I pass the clarification on to everybody on the blog. Th...

Nasality and the Soft Palate or Velum

More on the concept of “flat” with regards to voice and accents. Commenting on a question about the “Flat-A” sound and why even good speakers from ...

What does “flat” mean?

I mention flat intonation and vowel quality in the Boston materials, and a linguist wanted more detail on what exactly I meant by that, as the term...

Thick Vocal Folds vs. Thin Vocal Folds

Accent Help coach Jim Johnson talks through the basics of how the vocal folds work, what impact this has on honesty, and how it affects some accent...

Flat Accents and Round Accents

A follow-up question from a reader about the varied ways that “flat” is used to describe accents: “Are there any accents for which the key concept ...

Lifting the Soft Palate – Reducing Nasality

Accent Help coach Jim Johnson goes further into how the soft palate (velum) works, and tricks and tips on how to lift it: The soft palate is especi...

Learning Accents: Nasality or Twang?

A lot of people think that an accent or dialect is nasal when it isn’t necessarily so! Often times we interpret twang in a voice as being a nasal s...

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