New York Dialect: Placement

Video Transcript

"Now, it's very easy to pick up on a dialect if you're using your ears. Let's say you're around someone from New York, or Great Britain or the South, and you know, they're talking and all of a sudden, you know, maybe you're down South and they're talking like this and all of a sudden, you're talking like that, and it's like "what?" Alright, that's not the way to learn a dialect. That's actually more of a mimicry. The way to learn a dialect, the first thing we have to talk about is what I refer to as point of placement. Now, I don't know if you knew this or not, but every single dialect, whether it's Texas, Detroit, Boston, use speak in a certain way where you have a point of placement. Now, I am going to talk about standard American. Standard American point of placement is in the middle of your mouth. That means your words resonate in the middle of your mouth. So, in order learn a dialect what we have to do is change our facial structure so that the words, the point of placement, changes. Now, this sounds crazy and overwhelming right now, but it's really very simple. Standard American dialect I'm talking right now the words are resonating in the middle of my mouth. I want to be New York. So, my new point of resonance is going to be here in my chin. Imagine that you're smacking on some gum. Like you're doing like this. Feel how that feels? That's where we're going to try to place the words, right here in the bottom of our chin. So, we're going to use our jaw and the front of our bottom teeth a lot more than we ever would in standard American dialect. You know, Southern dialect the point of placement is in the back. Australian dialect is upper back. Irish dialect is two inches in front of the lips. But we're working on New York, so we're going to shoot for resting the words in the bottom of our jaw. Alright?"