Consonants
The first thing I had to remember when working on consonants is the at rest position. The 'at rest' position, when you aren't saying anything, is more rounded in Binisaya than in English. The result of this seemingly minor change is that the entire language is slightly more rounded, so instead of saying 'b' like I'm popping my lips after putting on lipstick, it's more like I'm blowing a kiss, though not that exaggerated
The second thing I had to work on was aspiration. Voiceless stops (k in particular) are unaspirated in Visaysan. Because of the short duration and, generally, the way most syllables (especially those centered around the vowel /a/) end in a glottal stop, the /k/ sound tends to disappear between /a?/ and /a?/ or /a?/ and /o?/, especially when it is in that environment in a word initial position. In the line /bu?hi? sa? ka?nunay/ for example, the /k/ is produced almost as a click, with the combination of the glottal stop and what should be a /k/ producing a double release effect which does not become a full /k/ sound. Because my archetype is careful speech, a set of song lyrics, this is the most significant instance of linking as well.
As a native English speaker, keeping my consonants unaspirated is incredibly difficult, and I still haven't managed it with the voiced stops, which are also unaspirated, though in careful speech, some minimal aspiration may occur in /b/ and /g/, but not /d/ in the archetype, which I suspect is actually back transfer from English. The word initial stops are especially hard to eliminate aspiration in, I can just about manage it intervocally and it's not terribly hard in the rarer coda positions, but it usually takes at least three tries before I can eliminate the aspiration in a word initial voiced stop.
Interestingly, the lack of aspiration is what produces one of the most characteristic features of a Visayan speaker's English. To native English speakers, a Visayan saying 'big backpack' generally sounds like they are saying 'pig packback' or 'pig packpag' or even 'pig pagpag'. In order to practice that lack of aspiration, despite my archetype being in Binisaya, I have been trying to apply that accent to English speech. If I can get it when I'm speaking English, it should be easier to do when I'm speaking Binisaya.
I started this attempt with singing, also incorporating my vowel work. This is an old trick I've been using to learn accents for years- if I can sing in that accent, when it is easier to adjust things like duration, vowel placement, and airflow (or at least when I have been trained to do so and therefore find it easier), it's usually a short step to carry that over to my speech. When the variable in question is aspiration, this is much less simple than normal, but to me it seems as to be even more helpful as well- if it's harder when singing and I can do it, the speech should be no problem.
The song I usually use for this is Seven Wonders by Nickel Creek. Here are the lyrics for the first verse and chorus with the Visayan accented words approximated next to the English (I will fix this to IPA at some point):
When shadows fall/ wen shado?s faw
He'll close his eyes/ hil klos his ays
To hear the clocks unwind/ to hirr da klox unwin
Powerless to leash the hands of time/ pawerliss to lish da hans ?op daym
Seven wonders crowed the man/ seben wonders kro?t da man
Knowing six are gone/ no?ing siks are gon
And how the great illusion lingers on/ an haw da gred iwlusho?n li?ngers awn
It's not the best choice for working on /b/ or /g/, but it is the song I'm most used to working on and is very useful for some of the other tricks- /v/ is /b/, /f/ is /p/, /z/ is /s/ and coda position /l/ becomes /w/. Even when it isn't working directly on the problem, it helps my mind keep track of what sounds do and do not exist in Binisaya.
I also practiced unaspirated consonants in English and Binisaya by the simple expedient of putting my hand in front of my mouth, and if I felt my breath strongly, I had to do it again. Luckily, while I can almost hear it when a native Visayan speaker says it, when I say 'big backpack' with no aspiration it sounds like 'pig bakpag' to me and I know what I'm saying. A lot of the time, I end up with popping sounds instead of the actual consonant, but it sounds closer, so I'm still working on it.
The next thing to work on is stress, because that becomes one of the ways to distinguish between word initial /ba/ and word initial /pa/, stressed is /ba/, unstressed is /pa/, and stress differences do create minimal pairs in Binisaya.
