Does anyone have a chip on their shoulder about the way...

English as a Second Language What do you want to talk about?
1

Hi,

Does anyone have a chip on their shoulder about the way they speak? Would they like to sound different? Have they ever felt like this when they’ve heard themselves for the first time on tape?

Alan

2

I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about the way I speak (contrary to what you may think), and I don’t wish I spoke a different way. However, I do wish that some people didn’t have a chip on their shoulder about the way other people speak.

The issue of liking or not liking the way you sound on a recording is a different issue entirely. Hardly anyone likes the way they sound on a recording, because the voice they hear in their head sounds different to them than the voice that passes through the air. My voice sounds about 10 octaves lower in a recording than it does to me when it’s vibrating through my skull.

Another funny thing about recordings is that people are usually very unaware of how they really speak. They may speak one dialect but imagine they speak another one. I used to be glad that I didn’t pronounce [?] as a diphthong, like many people in my part of the country who pronounce “cat” something like “kee-uht”. I was very proud that I never spoke this way. However, recordings revealed to me that sometimes I do!

It’s even funnier with singing. At a college where I went, there was a priest who thought he was spreading joy by singing for people every chance he got. One day, in a TV production class, the other students took a video of his performance and played it back to him. He was mortified and had to rethink his true calling.

3

Hi!

Is having a chip on the shoulder a weaked form of carrying a chip on the shoulder?

However, I am not really angry about the way I speak although I mostly try to use an easily understandable and precise vocabulary. Of course, sometimes it happens to me that I fall into the M?nsterl?nder dialekt and words like “was or das” turn into “wat or dat” or I speak out some else M?nsterl?nder characters like “jovel” or “schovel”. Years ago when I lived in Berlin my nickname was “Jovel”.

That day I?ve heard my own voice from a tape first I stopped singing aloud. I must have had the same impression like Jamie?s priest! :wink: But hearing my own voice from the phone tape I?m quite satisfied with it. It could be more worse!

Speaking on a tape and hearing their own voice could be an issue for Toastmasters, as I imagine.

Michael