66. Speak Crisply and Eliminate Mumbling

Why can’t the English learn to speak?

—“My Fair Lady,” Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

Be Your Own Henry Higgins

How often have you had to ask someone to repeat what they just said? If you’re like most people, probably quite often. Putting the shoe on the other foot, how often have you been asked to repeat what you’ve just said? If you’re like most people, probably quite often.

This all-too-frequent social exchange is not due to a decline of the auditory capacity of our population; the fault, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Mumbling has become chronic in conversation, in the theater, and in films. The New York Times described a new cinema genre called “Mumblecore,” characterized by “low-key naturalism, low-fi production values and a stream of low-volume chatter often perceived as ineloquence.”¹

Such films, as well as many theater productions, cause you to turn to your companion to ask, “What’d he say?” In conversation, mumbling causes a similar request for repetition. In presentations and speeches, it causes your audience to miss or worse, misunderstand, your valuable words. Still worse, ineloquence creates a negative perception.

What’s the rush? The culprit is the accelerated pace of our everyday lives. Powered by increasingly faster airplanes, vehicles, Internet speeds, devices, and apps, we are driven to perform all our mundane daily activities faster: traveling, eating, walking, tweeting—and speaking. This rushed rhythm has propelled the rate of our speech into unintelligible garbles.

Don’t blame the twenty-first century. Consider the pre-technology nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the differing lifestyles—and speech cadences—of urban and rural dwellers. New Yorkers have always been characterized by their rapid speech, Southerners and Westerners by their slow drawl. Even in today’s highly mobile society, those patterns continue to identify a person’s origins. Many native New Yorkers still sound like auctioneers on steroids.

Unfortunately, the remedy is not to slow down. People cannot slow down; they can only control the tempo of their speech. Pausing helps to accomplish that goal, yet there is another way to facilitate control, a simple technique to eliminate mumbling and speak crisply.

Athletic Articulation

The great Irish-born British Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw was a writer who knew a thing or two about voice, having created the character of Professor Henry Higgins, the quintessential speech teacher, for his play Pygmalion, the source for the world famous musical My Fair Lady. Mr. Shaw, a keen critic, was also highly attuned to how people spoke; he gave Professor Higgins eloquent dialogue.

In one of Mr. Shaw’s earlier plays, Candida, he described one of the principal characters, The Reverend James Mavor Morell, as follows:

A vigorous, genial, popular man of forty, robust and good looking, full of energy, with pleasant, hearty, considerate manners, and a sound, unaffected voice, which he uses with the clean, athletic articulation of a practised orator, and with a wide range and perfect command of expression.²

Note the key words “athletic articulation.” The common definitions of those words are obvious; athletic refers to sports, and articulation to speaking. But each word has an additional definition: athletic means vigorous, and articulation means movement. Mr. Shaw’s two simple words provide the remedy for mumbling: to speak as Reverend Morell does, with a “perfect command of expression,” you must move your mouth, the primary mechanism of speech, vigorously.

Pardon the play on words, but vigorous movement is much easier said than done. If you mumble, you do so because, in your accelerated speech pattern, you move your mouth, lips, tongue, and jaw quickly in a tightly confined range of motion. This constricted action clips the production of individual words and jams the words against one another, creating that indistinguishable garble. Furthermore, having spoken rapidly all your life, you have developed a habit pattern as deeply ingrained as being right- or left-handed. Breaking that speed pattern is almost as difficult as switching handedness. It can be done, but you have to do it progressively.

Primer

To implement athletic articulation, hold up a mirror and watch your mouth as you speak. Notice the action of your lips and your jaw. Are they moving vigorously? Are you seeing your teeth as you speak? If you mumble, you will see very little white.

Now say the words, “athletic articulation,” and notice what happens. You see more white. The words cause you to do what they mean.

Now say “athletic articulation” again, but this time, exaggerate each word and observe your teeth. More white. You’ll also notice that your pronunciation of the words is clearer.

At this point you’re probably thinking that all this exaggerated movement looks strange. That’s right it does, and far be it for me to recommend that you act strangely to sound clear. But consider the exaggeration as a warm-up process, just like stretching before engaging in a sport. Athletes warm up differently from the way they perform in a game. Extending the analogy, do not attempt to perform this technique in your game of life, in social or business settings. Practice the exercise in private until you gain facility.

A simple rule of thumb is to repeat the words “athletic articulation” in front of a mirror twice a day for about a minute each time. You can do these exercises right after you brush your teeth in the morning and at night. (The white will be whiter.) After a while, begin to add some other random words either spontaneously or reading a sentence or two from a newspaper or magazine. Always focus on seeing and feeling the vigorous movement of your mouth. Also listen and you’ll hear your words become crisper.

Seek your own comfort level, the point at which your movements feel less exaggerated, but your words sound more distinct. The time it takes to reach that level will vary by person and by the time and diligence each person applies.

When you feel comfortable, try to speak with athletic articulation in select private situations: with a family member, a friend or a coworker. Little by little, as you gain more facility, you can begin to try athletic articulation in more open social settings. Do it in small increments. Walk before you run. Wait until you have attained mastery to try your new skill in an important presentation or speech. The operative word is progressively.

I practice what I preach. As a native New Yorker, I spoke my words at Olympic track speeds. Now I teach other people how to control their cadence.

Be Your Own Henry Higgins

One of the most memorable scenes in My Fair Lady is when Professor Higgins has a breakthrough in his efforts to train Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, to speak as if she were a duchess. To build tension for the breakthrough, the staging of the scene makes it clear that the process has been long and arduous. As Eliza struggles to pronounce her exercise, “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain,” an exhausted Professor Higgins slouches in his chair and repeatedly says, “Again.”³

Your athletic articulation exercises, while tedious, do not need the services of a Professor Higgins. Eliza Doolittle was trying to alter her Cockney pronunciation, the sound of her voice, and she needed help. We don’t hear ourselves objectively. Use the practice recommendation in Chapter 13, “Writer’s Block II.” Develop your story by recording yourself and then listening to the recording to hear your speech pattern objectively.

In your practice to control the rate of your speech, you have two far more objective criteria than sound: the sight and the feel of your mouth, lips, and jaw in motion. If you practice in front of a mirror and see and feel your facial muscles and mouth moving vigorously—and your teeth flashing white—you will know that you are speaking crisply. At that point, you become your own Professor Higgins and can provide your own “Agains.” Repetition over time is the only way you can effect real change.

You needn’t aspire to become “a practised orator” like Reverend Morell or try to pass yourself off as a duchess as Eliza Doolittle did. Just be sure that every word you utter in your presentation or speech is crystal clear.