Assimilation

One of the many delights of working at Manchester University is getting to chat with people from all walks of life on the train back home in the evening. One of the people who I often enjoy talking with is a speech and language therapist who teaches here in Manchester. And it's the conversation that I had with her which forms the basis of my blog for today. It's all about assimilation.

I suppose that I should start off by saying that this is my interpretation of everything that Fay said to me and is quite possibly completely wrong, but it's very seldom that I let the facts get in the way of something. So with all due apologies to Fay for inaccuracies, let me hold forth about assimilation as it relates to musical theatre.

It all started when I was asking Fay whether there was a reason why the ladies in the group appeared to be so much more competent at pronouncing consonants at the ends of their words than us guys appear to be. When I'm sitting there singing away I do try hard to remember to pronounce the T or D on the ends of words, and not to run words into each other. And it often seems that the ladies trill away merrily, effortlessly close off words and separate them with out any appearance of hard effort at all.

So how happy was I when Fay told me all about assimilation, which effectively means that I don't really need to worry about this at all!

When someone hears a word, they will fill in the blanks for themselves. Here's the example that she used "Handbag". Go on, give it a go. Say handbag. Did you pronounce the d? Could people tell what you were saying? This is assimilation. People will hear the word that you meant to say, even if you miss out the odd letter here and there.

It was with a joy filled heart that I went along to BMT practice last night, safe in the knowledge that I could sing "Teh me iss noh troo" and people would understand me perfectly.

And I guess that's the rub, as so often seems the case. People would understand me perfectly. But that's probably because the ladies are happily singing the missing consonants for me. As well as that, there's the fact that missing out those letter endings means that the song just doesn't sound quite as good.

So I will keep trying, whilst being relatively reassured that most people will know what I'm singing about anyway, because they will be busily assimilating it for themselves in the audience.

Purely because it made me smile, I guess that I should also add in here that ladies are being asked to tone down their consonation (is that a real word - meant to mean enunciation of consonants) in the middle of 'You are so beautiful' by putting a D sound in the middle. I think Terry was getting wet with all those lovely ladies spitting out the T in the word. So maybe there is another plus side to assimilation? What fun!