Thursday, August 12, 2010

My Toastmaster's speech 6 - "Lessons in pronunciation from the past"

Its called "Vocal Variety" and focus is on voice including volume, pitch, rate, quality, pauses and expressiveness. Also, lessons from previous projects should be kept in mind.
This post would not give exactly the same idea on reading as the speech delivery did. But still, read on if you please......

Nobody is born with impeccable pronunciation - that is a fact, and that no one can achieve absolutely immaculate pronunciation in a lifetime is a debatable issue - if you include it to say..all languages, or even the myriad accents of any one language, it becomes impossible - like counting all stars or asking kids to keep quiet or thoroughly testing your code. You see, pronunciation is a science and an art which is in a continuous vicious circle of evolution, and has to be acquired like taste and developed over the years, and even after doing that, you can never be sure about everything.

Good Afternoon friends. As my glaringly blatant introduction suggested, today for my sixth project, I’ll be talking about - pronunciation. But given my oft discussed undying love for stories and anecdotes, its not just that, but lessons in pronunciation from my past, some such instances which not only changed my perspective towards this whole thing, but generated this totally new curiosity and thirst for learning the English language and endeavoring….no...striving to speak it correctly till date.

It all began in 3rd standard when I had joined my new school. Our social studies teacher was checking our homework copies in the class in front of everyone so that all of us could benefit from each others mistakes, in short, enjoying our collective yet individual humiliation in her own ingenious way. And, as it had to happen, my turn came, and I meekly went to her, chanting under my breath ‘o god please save me o god please save me’, when she suddenly roared “Are you maharashtrian?” I managed to croak, yes ma’am. “That’s what I thought. Tell me, what comes after September?” “Octomber”. Suddenly she softened up and said, my dear, its October, not Octomber. And to this date, I don’t call October Octomber, not even in my dreams.

The other day my little nephew was reciting his alphabets in his sing song voice…j for jacket, k for kite, l for loin…and my entire world just froze and while I screamed wait!! The whole lion episode flashbacked as if right in front of my eyes. This took place during primary school, when our headmistress used to teach us English. Someone was reading a passage from the book and he read the word l-i-o-n as loin. Sundaram maam asked this person to stop immediately and ordered us in her aristocratic voice - everyone open their pocket dictionaries right now and look up this word in it. Well, what choice did we have, we did that and started giggling after reading its meaning. Then she told us - now remember, that is what you mean when you say loin, and that is also why you should pronounce l-i-o-n as lion. And to this date, I don’t call lion as loin, not even in my dreams.

Fast forward to 11th standard. I and a group of friends were practicing a song in chorus which we were going to sing in the farewell party we had organized for our seniors. The song was Larger than Life from Backstreet Boys. It had a line which goes - “wishing I could thank you in a different way, all right” and all of us were saying “thank” (with emphasis on ‘th’) instead if the correct thank, and to our perfectionist lead singer and conductor, who was of course one of us and doing this for the first and maybe the last time, it was sounding as if someone was thumping a hammer on his head with this thank you instead of expressing any gratitude. So he made us listen to this song back to back for some 10-15 times, and we rehearsed it for I don’t even remember how many times, till each and every one of us had his thank you corrected. And to this date, I don’t say thanks as ‘th’anks, not even in my dreams.

So these were some episodes from my life which taught me to take articulation seriously and jolted me from time to time to keep sharpening and straightening these skills. And like life, this too is a continuous journey, and I keep going back to word web to listen to correct pronunciations whenever my friends give me the special disgusted look, like when I say conscience as con-science, twilight in place of twIlight, or …the list is endless and is still counting.

This speech took 6:30 minutes to deliver and was appreciated for vocal variety and body language, the rate of speech could have been a bit lower.