| My father grew up in a very rural, very uneducated part of the U.S. and had a deep "southern" accent (though "country" or "rural" is probably more apt). When he was 16 or so he ran away from home and landed in Chicago where his accent immediately marked him as a country bumpkin. This made him tremendously shy in the city and he spent most of his time in isolation. He spent years retraining his accent, reading Webster's, practicing day in and day out. To this day he can't even successfully fake the accent of his youth. My best guess as to what he sounded like comes from his brothers, all of whom have a rich rural accent to this day. As part of his effort to get over his shyness and his accent, he joined several public speaking clubs. While they helped with his accent and his shyness, they also taught him a great deal about hesitation noises and he's passed on two things to me (which of course I didn't truly appreciate until years later when I had to get out and start talking in front of groups). 1) Hesitation noises are usually just a way for our brain to catch up with our mouth, interestingly and helpfully, it's also a way for an audience's brain to catch up with their ears. 2) It's funny becoming aware of them, it's like suddenly becoming aware of breathing, it's very automatic, and when you start to think about it, the first thing you do is take a deep breath. The same with ums and ahhs, once you are aware of them, the first thing you should do is take a deep breath instead of saying them. The audience will be glad for the pause, they'll have time to absorb the complex thought that you are in the process of putting together anyways. And you'll have time to put it together. If the deep breaths aren't your thing he also recommended I turn my "ums" into "mmms" and then the next step is to turn the voiced "mmms" into a silent outbreath through my nose with my lips in the "mmm" position. It doesn't make a distracting noise and the effect is a thoughtful pause. |