Diction and Languages

IPA  |  Vowels  |  Consonants  |  Languages  |  Links  |  Quiz

This page is dedicated to Gilah Yaron, my teacher, a diction “freak” who turned me into one too...

Diction is important for any singer singing in any language. Singers do not only sing notes; unlike any other musician - singers sing notes and text. This means that we are partly actors; delivering a verbal message. To deliver that message successfully - we have to have good diction. Good vocal technique usually means good diction and vise versa. I say usually because there are cases where they contradict and we will have to sacrifice one for the other. In classical singing - we will usually sacrifice the diction to achieve beauty of tone while in popular music we may prefer the diction. It all depends on the circumstances and our interpretation.

The first step of achieving good diction is developing awareness for it. We may think that our diction is good, especially in our mother tongue; we use that language all the time for speaking, don’t we? But singing is more than just speaking and we all need to exaggerate, especially when we are off guard, believing that diction in our mother tongue comes naturally. Nothing comes naturally - everything is a result of awareness, decisions and correction. Most trained singers usually have better diction in a foreign language due to this awareness.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

After developing awareness we have to become diction literate and learn the signs of the the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). IPA are the funny symbols that appear in dictionaries following the word; they tell you how to pronounce it (see example).

The first step is to look at the IPA for English, and learn the signs of the vowels and consonants using a familiar language.

The next step is to learn how to use the full IPA chart. Click on the image for an interactive IPA chart.

IPA chart

Learning the IPA symbols and being able to pronounce them will help us analyze our own diction and what needs to be done to improve it. Pronouncing many foreign sounds develops our vocal tract flexibility (tongue, lips, velum, pharynx, jaw and ear).

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Vowels and Diphthongs

One of the difference between singing and speaking is time: we sing much slower. And most of that time we sing on vowels. Because of that - we have to define the vowels very clearly: know how to form them (physically) know how they feel and define how they should really sound like, in different pitches. As singers we have to make sure we do not fall into either of the following traps:

  1. Having too much difference in color between “dark”/“bright”/“open”/“closed” vowels will result in an impression that the singer has a split personality. Each vowel should be defined, yet not too different/distant from other vowels.
  2. Losing the special overtones and of each vowel, resulting in a boring neutral vowel [ə] sound for all vowels.

It helps to think of a meaningful word with the desired vowel - by merely thinking about it we make small adjustments to our vocal tract muscles and get a clearer vowel.

The 5 basic Italian vowels are: [i], [ɛ], [a], [ɔ], [u], beginning with the “bright”/“brilliant”/“front” vowel and ending with the “dark”/“round”/“covered”/“back” vowel. The different vowels are created and defined by the tongue, the lips, the velum - in short - the shape of the vocal tract. See the following pictures, demonstrating mostly the tongue position (click pictures to read more about the differences between vowels):

Tongue Position in Front Vowels

Tongue Position in Back Vowels

Another vowel which is useful for exercises sometimes is the [y] vowel: it has the forward of the [i] and the feeling of a long tube that we get from the [u]. Combined together into an [y] vowel they help in focusing the voice.

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Vowel Modification

As we ascend with the pitch so do the characteristic overtones of our vowels. Front vowels, [i] for example, will sound too bright and tight to a point of squeaky. This is the reason that we modify the vowels and make them rounder as we ascend. [i] would change in a direction of [ɛ], [ɛ] → [a], etc. During the lesson, and for each song separately, we will find when/if/how much modification is needed. It is important not to overdue this modification as it ruins the diction and may harm the voice (darker vowels are heavier vowels).

Diphthongs

A Diphthong is a glide from one vowel to another, very quickly and smoothly. The English language has many diphthongs; words without diphthongs are rare. This contributes to the roundness of the language, but does not always help in singing. When practicing the basic five Italian vowels discussed above - take care not to add a diphthong at the end!

The basic rule about diphthongs in singing: delay the second vowel. We sing on the first vowel and only when we are about to move to the next syllable do we pronounce the second vowel. For example: the word “night” should be sung [na-a-a-a-a-a-a-It] and not [na-I-I-I-I-I-t]. Try it and see that elongating the second vowel sounds funny and almost makes it difficult to understand the words. Canadians (especially in British Colombia) pronounce a long [ʊ] in the word “about”; that is why other English speakers think they hear [əˈbʊt] instead of the standard [əˈbaʊt]. Play with the length of the first vowel in this diphthong: [əˈba:ʊt], [əˈbaʊt], [əˈbaʊ:t] (colon after the vowel elongates it) and hear how your accent changes...

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Consonants

The signs of most of the IPA consontants will be easier to learn as most of them are very straightforward. Get familiar with the different consonants signs and see where and how they are formed using this interactive IPA consonants chart.

Singers should exaggerate pronouncing the consonants, using extra time and extra support on them. If we do not pay that extra attention - it will probably not be understood; remember that you usually sing in bigger halls with live acoustics - which means that you have to enunciate more than you would in normal speech, to overcome the echo and the distance to your audience.

Playing with stressing, elongating or shortening and voicing consonants is a wonderful way of adding expression and meaning to your songs. It is more difficult to sing with consonants than without; but learn to enjoy the possibilities - and you will learn to enjoy singing them.

Voiced/Unvoiced Consonants

Many consonants come in pairs of voice and unvoiced. If you whisper the word “vase” [veIz] it will sound like “face” [feIs]. Whispering is saying the words without vibrating the vocal folds and all your voiced consonants will turn into unvoiced (put your fingers on your larynx while saying and whispering the word “vase” and feel the difference). Some examples of pairs of voiced/unvoiced consontants are:

  • [v] and [f]
  • [z] and [s]
  • [d] and [t]
  • [g] and [k]
  • [b] and [p]
  • [ʒ] and [ʃ]
  • [ð] and [θ]

We must make sure that we use voiced consonants (when needed) and not be “lazy” and use the unvoiced ones (except for consonant modifications - see below).

Multiple/Consecutive Consonants

When we sing, we have to make sure that we pronounce all the consonants. Some languages have more consonants than others; the more notorious are German and Czech (Czech has words with 4-5 consonants and no vowel at all!), although English follows closly behind...

Give time and a ilttle extra support for each consonant, otherwise the audience will not hear them. Remember that your vowel should be on the beat, so always pronounce the consonants a bit earlier. Learn to be aware of some sounds that you use so often that you may think they are a single consonant, but they are not. For example the sound “ch” in English is actually made out of two consonants: [t] and [ʃ] = [ʧ].

Another issue with multiple consonants rises from consonant/s at the end of a word + the one/s at the beginning of the next word. Most of the time you should pronounce both, unless the first word is unimportant and does not deserve any stress (see Consonant Modifications).

Consonant Modifications / Compromises

Sometimes the price for insisting on all consonants is too high, and result in a lower quality of sound; in these cases we sacrifice the diction for the sake of beautiful tone. Following are some examples:

  • On high notes the voice may scoop from below the note because of a voiced consonant or it will take too long to open from the consonant to the vowel and too long to reach the pretty sound. In these cases - we will use the unvoiced consonant or none at all.
  • If we are repeating the same words (happens sometimes in arias) we can neglect the diction on the repeat if it contributes to a better sound and if we make sure that the first time was understood.
  • On unimportant words we may neglect some of the consonants (especially if there are multiple consecutive consonants) if they cause us to put too much emphasis on them and do not allow the correct phrasing of the music. If we have the same consonant at the end of a word and at the beginning of the next one - we can connect them (unless the first word is very important and needs additional emphasis).

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Languages

Here is a cool tool that you can use to hear how words (or sentences) sound in several languages. Most common sung languages are available, we are just missing Czech to complete the regular performed repertoire... Use it only as reference as it may have mistakes - but it does give a good feeling of the language. You can choose the speed (I would choose slow so you can hear better, besides, singing is mostly much slower than speech). Have fun with it! My personal favourite is to put a text in one language and have it read in another...

Visit the Diction Links section and find links to help you with a specific language.

More coming soon...

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Diction Links

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Diction Quiz

  1. Pick a song, write the lyrics out with enough spaces between the lines. Write the IPA above the line. Bring it to class for me to check. Do that with two-three songs, and you will already feel comfortable with IPA symbols!
  2. Pick an English word that sounds differently in different accents. Write down the IPA of that word in each different accent. Bring it to your lesson and we will discuss it together. You may find the above links about English accents useful.
  3. Challenge yourself and learn a song in a language that you have never sung before. It will develop your ear and musicality by exposing yourself to new sounds and phonetic rules, it will develop your vocal tract flexibility and it will be an enriching cultural experience!

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