Long words

The insight of pronouncing long words came into my mind when I was talking with my new GAP partner yesterday. Most of the time, when I tried to say "ingredients", the conversation ended up with:

"...blah blah blah....ingredblurueahruegheafsg", then followed up by an awkward stop.

"ingre....whaat?" was always her reply, along with knitted brows and an innocent look of widely opened eyes.

She is cute and all but that makes me feel so bad about my pronunciation.
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"Ingredients", "superficial", "recurrences" are examples of English words that have four or more syllables. Basically, they are the most challenging words to pronounce when I speak.

The reason is not really simple. Imagine when you start speaking something, and begin with a syllable. There is quite a lot of way to start the next syllable, which are: lowering your voice, stressing on the next syllable, raising your tone, damping your tone, etc. Among them, there are only a few ways or most of the time, there is only one way to start that next syllable right. Speaking is like music, we tend to speak in a flow. If the first syllable comes out of our mouth is right, then we can be able to proceed to the next syllable, or else our brain will be confused and tells us to stop. Same for music, if we are playing a song, then suddenly we get one note wrong, we likely cannot continue to the next note after it. There is one explanation: we do not have that next note/or syllable in our memory, and if we want to somehow derive that note/syllable, we will have to think a little. Thinking takes time, which, in a fast speaking process or a fast song, we do not have. Our brain tends to remember a long word in a tune, and when we speak, our sounding system tries to remake that tune for us. Therefore, when we make any preceding syllable wrong, our sounding system will be messed up. The only way to successfully pronounce a long word is to sound every syllable that has a successor in the right tone.

It seems easy at first because when we try to say a word alone, usually we will sound it right. However, the real life situation is more complicated than that. We have to put that word in use, by placing it somewhere in our sentences. In a sentence, each word should have its unique way to pronounce, and this is what makes thing become harder. There is a chance that after finishing the first word, our sounding system is placed in a tone that is pretty far from the tone of the first syllable of the long word we are about to say. If we are not prepared for that case, for example, the next word is just something we just think of a moment ago and we need it to describe the current situation, then it is likely that we pronounce that first syllable in a wrong tone, or even in an extremely ridiculous wrong way. When the first syllable is wrong, most of the time our brain cannot automatically infer to the next syllable and we are screwed!

There are some countermeasures to prevent these kinds of situation:

1. Be prepared for every speech you are going to make. However, most of our daily conversation are considered chatting, not making a speech. We never know the next chat topic coming so we can prepare for it.

2. Speak a lot. Eventually, if you try to put a long word into your sentences many times, you will go through all situations with that word and know what are the right ways to sound your sentences without breaking your long word. Basically, your brain will infer a proper tune for those sentences. This process happens among native speakers, and their vocabulary of "sentence tones" is being built since they were infants until they master the art of English. Foreigners like me would take quite some time to be able to do the same.

3. Speak slowly. I meant, really slow, like a snail doing a stroll in a park on a summer day, with gentle winds of fresh air and colorful flowers everywhere. Speaking that way would give you the time to think and correct your long words after a few first syllables go wrong. Sometime, you even can invent some incredibly awesome sounds that are funny and original. One known example is when Jim Carrey tried to pronounce "Alright" in Ace Ventura, he sounded the syllable "righ" so long he had to add a "ty" and a "then" after it to fill the expected gap. The result was a distinguish "Alriiighty then" that makes his image into audience's heart. It is funny that sometime, we consider socially awkward as awesome. This slowly speaking method has a drawback though. Most of the time slow speakers will annoy or bore the listeners.

4. Shut up and pretending you are not there! This beautiful method is the ultimate solution for any problem with your speech. It is based on a ground-truth that is "if you don't do anything, then you can't do anything wrong.". The legend says that if thou master this utterly majestic sophisticated technique, thou shall be named as the King of Socially Awkwardness.

The choices shall be upon thy hands.