reibish
Proud Member
Just wondering if anyone had any information or insight on Michael's manner of speech.
I remember Kenny talked about it as "his Indiana accent" in TII - however that is definitely NOT an "accent" from Indiana (I've spent way too much time there, that's now how they speak!)
When I search for stuff, it mostly just comes up with information on teaching children how to pronounce the letter L rather than teens and adults who never learned it correctly.
To be clear what I'm talking about: Michael had an interesting pattern about how he would pronounce the letter L. If it was the first letter in a word, such as LOVE there was no issue. If it wasn't an emphasized syllable, such as the word "really," the word tend to be weakened overall, but he could still pronounce it clearly, and that was that slight Midwestern vowel - it would sound like "rilly". However, if the letter L was in an emphasized syllable and followed by a hard consonant, it sounded as though he held his tongue back in his mouth and did not bring it forward to roll correctly and produce the correct sound. Examples:
Children = "chewdren"
Child = "cheyl" (not to be confused with "chile" which is purposefully pronounced that way)
World = "whirew" / "whirl"
Old = "ode"
Normal = "nowmuh" (bit of rhotacism with the letter R in this word)
This didn't seem to often affect his speech when singing (doesn't surprise me as many people lose their accents/speech issues when singing) but I'm just wondering if others have examples or know of any other information on it? Sometimes I wonder if he didn't want to "fix" it if it may have possibly interefered with his vocal technique (not implying he wanted to "repair" it at all, but it's common for singers to completely avoid changing anything about their throat and mouth for fear of altering their voice)
Random topic, I know.
I remember Kenny talked about it as "his Indiana accent" in TII - however that is definitely NOT an "accent" from Indiana (I've spent way too much time there, that's now how they speak!)
When I search for stuff, it mostly just comes up with information on teaching children how to pronounce the letter L rather than teens and adults who never learned it correctly.
To be clear what I'm talking about: Michael had an interesting pattern about how he would pronounce the letter L. If it was the first letter in a word, such as LOVE there was no issue. If it wasn't an emphasized syllable, such as the word "really," the word tend to be weakened overall, but he could still pronounce it clearly, and that was that slight Midwestern vowel - it would sound like "rilly". However, if the letter L was in an emphasized syllable and followed by a hard consonant, it sounded as though he held his tongue back in his mouth and did not bring it forward to roll correctly and produce the correct sound. Examples:
Children = "chewdren"
Child = "cheyl" (not to be confused with "chile" which is purposefully pronounced that way)
World = "whirew" / "whirl"
Old = "ode"
Normal = "nowmuh" (bit of rhotacism with the letter R in this word)
This didn't seem to often affect his speech when singing (doesn't surprise me as many people lose their accents/speech issues when singing) but I'm just wondering if others have examples or know of any other information on it? Sometimes I wonder if he didn't want to "fix" it if it may have possibly interefered with his vocal technique (not implying he wanted to "repair" it at all, but it's common for singers to completely avoid changing anything about their throat and mouth for fear of altering their voice)
Random topic, I know.