SOFT PALATE EXERCISES 6 of 6 Vocal Exercises American English Pronunciation
As part of our series
on relaxation and placement,
this video talks about the soft palate.
An overall nasal sound can be caused
either by tension in the throat,
or by a lowered soft palate.
When the soft palate is lowered,
it allows some air to come through here,
into the nasal cavity.
That makes the voice live
more in the face than in the body.
Luckily there is a very easy way
to tell if this is a problem for you.
If you put your fingers
on the bridge of your nose,
you will feel it vibrate
if your soft palate is lowered.
Try it.
Put your fingers here and say NN-AH.
I feel a vibration for the N,
which has a lowered soft palate,
but not for the AH,
which has a raised soft palate.
There are only three sounds
in English that are nasal,
with a lowered soft palate.
They are N, M, and NG.
Many other languages have nasal vowels,
where the soft palate is down,
including Mandarin, Polish,
Hindi, French, and Portuguese.
If your native language has nasal vowels,
you’ll really want to pay attention to this.
First, test yourself. Let’s take the word ON.
It has the AH
as in FATHER vowel and the N consonant.
Say it slowly, holding your nose. ON.
Were you able to make the vowel
with no vibration?
Another word, SONG,
has the AW as in LAW vowel
followed by the NG consonant, song.
Were you able to make the vowel
with no vibration?
A lot of my students get concerned with the
idea of raising and lowering the soft palate.
It’s sort of hard to feel, and hard see.
So I’ve told them
just to focus on keeping it lifted.
Somehow this does not interfere
with the nasal consonants.
I’ve never had a student
fix their overall sound
by keeping the soft palate raised,
but then mess up their nasal consonants.
So just focus on keeping it lifted.
How do you lift it.
There are a few ways
to get used to the feeling and the idea.
One way to get used to feeling
your soft palate is to suck through a straw.
When you suck through a straw,
your soft palate automatically closes
to prevent the liquid
from going up into your nasal cavity.
So, see if you can feel it close.
And if you can’t then try sucking up
through the straw and holding it there.
If you hold it, that might make
you more aware of the feeling here,
especially when you let go.
See if you feel anything release.
So go ahead, open a can of soda,
treat yourself to that,
and practice feeling your soft palate.
Another method that may help you
lift your soft palate is to just think
of creating more space back here.
If you’re creating more space,
you may automatically
lift your soft palate to accommodate that.
So you can focus on creating space in
the back of your mouth or throat as you talk.
Another way to feel your soft palate
is to watch yourself raising and lowering it.
Switch back and forth between AH and NG.
When you make the NG, of course,
you’re lowering your palate.
So switch back and forth between the two,
and try to keep your tongue
in the same position.
That means it’s your
soft palate that has to move.
Watch yourself in a mirror.
I’ll demonstrate now,
so you should see what that looks like.
So, the soft palate:
it’s hard to see and hard to feel,
but it does play an important role in the
placement of the voice in American English.
Play around with these exercises,
especially the last one,
and see if you can get used to the idea
of keeping your soft palate raised
in all vowel sounds and
most consonant sounds in American English.
This video is part of a series
on relaxation and placement.
If you liked the video,
check out the previous one
on the relaxation of the throat.
Please put any questions you have
in the comments section.
That’s it, and thanks so much for using
Rachel’s English.