Vo'wel Tro-uble

           The first thing I did was identify the five orthographic monophthong vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ and the two orthographic diphthongs,/ay/ and /aw/. The second thing I did was identify environments: cV cVc, Vc, nV, nVn, Vn, VV, V'c, cVV, VVc, VVn, nVV, based solely on the orthographic representation. Unlike in English, orthographic representation in Visayan is a fairly good representation of the language's sounds. I then identified the minimum lines I needed to cover all these environments (that occur in this script) for as many vowels as occur in them.

Buhi sa kanunay
Ug di ko hikalimtan

Bisag giyam-iran, bisan pa'g gitamay
Molambo ug molipang
Kay ang gumang matuod di mamatay
Tuhoi intawn ako

Bisa'g ibanlas sa luha

Didto sa kalangitan
Ako kang paabuton

I also highlighted the trouble spots I anticipated. It's worth noting that  - and ' both represent glottal stops in Visayan orthography.
What I found was that the vowels were all about environment. Listen to the clip above. That is every /a/ in the archetype laid end to end, cut as best I could to just the /a/ sounds. How many consonants can you still hear? Word final /a/ and /o/ all have glottal stops following them. The marked glottal stops in pa'g and bisa'g are only marked because they occur within a syllable instead of at the end of it. Vowels on either side of and especially between nasals all but disappear into said nasals. The /u/ in kanunay is all but indistinguishable.
In English, the sound of a word is dominated by the vowels. Get the vowels right, and most English speakers brains will fill in the consonants, regardless of which ones you actually say. In Visayan, there isn't a lot of bleed over, so you still have to say the right vowel, but the consonant's place of articulation is what dominates the rhythm.

The thing I had to practice most was cutting off the airflow to my vowels. English vowels tend to be prolonged, only cutting off when they hit an obstruent. Visayan vowels cut off, except for the diphthongs and coda /i/. English also tends to blend vowels. In Visayan, each vowel is distinct, no matter how many of them are in a row. I found that practicing this laying down helped me cut off the airflow, then I moved to doing it sitting up while I still had the correct sound and sensation in my head.
I practiced saying o-i-in, ho-i-in, ho-i-in-tawn, tu-ho-i-in-tawn for an hour before I could get it out at speed with each vowel distinct.
pa'g is still difficult, but that's more a matter of the consonants. I can get the vowel right; it's getting the /g/ in before the following gitamay.
Overall, the vowels in Visayan are fairly low energy as well. Highest energy goes to /s/ followed by the nasals, then either the vowels or initial voiced consonants. The vowels are strongest as diphthongs, followed by the multi-vowel sequences.
Another thing that helped me was using Praat to take a look at exactly what it was I was trying to say.

The final vowel trick I worked with was practicing the sung version. This is a set of song lyrics. Singing tends to disguise or erase accent markers, and I have a lot more control over what I'm doing, especially with the vowels. Also, the vowels are generally elongated and easier to work with individually. 

The next thing I need to work on is definitely consonants and linking.

Rhythm is gonna getcha.

This past week I've been working on rhythm and speech speed.
The first thing I did was create a beat-count, like a metronome for the archetype. It helps me to match the reading's speed and not instinctively go for the song's rhythm. I'm a percussionist, so I do tend to think in rhythms and beats. Once I had a tempo set, it really helped me stay on track.
The second thing I worked on was practicing reading along with the recording. The first dozen run-throughs showed me the trouble spots, the places where I always, always got off rhythm and the places where I had no trouble at all. Green is good to go, yellow is some trouble, red is where I keep messing up.

I
Buhi sa kanunay
Ug di ko hikalimtan
Sa hilom gibati ko
Ang kamingaw ning dughan

II
Bisag giyam-iran, bisan pa’g gitamay
Molambo ug molipang 
kay ang gugmang matuod di mamatay

Refrain:
Tuhoi intawn ako
Salig sa gisaad ko
Gugma kining way pagkalaya
Bisa’g ibanlas sa luha

III
Kon ang kasing-kasing ko
Sa palad sakiton
Didto sa kalangitan
Ako kang paabuton




https://soundcloud.com/murikakari/rhythmakp

Once I'd identified the trouble spots, I practiced listening to the recording and just chiming in on those spots. I spent a full session on the yellow. The next session worked on saying the yellow and green. Once I had the yellow mostly down and incorporated into the full text, I practiced on just the red. So far, I've managed to usually get the first and last syllables correct for the red lines, but find myself rushing or slowing mid-line time after time. Part of it is what I intend to spend the week after next working on, the change over between coda and initial consonants g-g folowed by g-m followed by ng-m then d-d. 
There's also this week's work- vowels. two or three sequential separately articulated vowels all of which are not quite where my mouth wants to place them. o-u o-i-in, u-o. It's easy enough when they are the same/similar vowel, as in gisaad in Line 9 or paabuton in Line 15, but the quick change between low and high causing problems. I'll be spending some time with those vowels in Praat this week, trying to analyze, exactly what's different about my vowels and Barbie's.

How Many Times Must I Recite.

This is my first attempt at replication.

Things I need to work on:
Voice Quality- Less Tense, Key is about right, but maybe a start a note lower

Rhythm- First attempt was focused on sound not on speed. Increase speech speed and watch stresses.

Consonants- Need to be sharper, better enunciated. I need to watch that I'm not dropping or softening coda-consonants, especially [g]. Also watch out for glottal stops in the codas. Should use Pratt to check for degree of aspiration, especially on [p] and [b], as /p/ /b/ /f/ /v/ can all occur as allophones. Previous experimentation has shown that my personal phonetic system is capable of substituting any of the four for variations not heard in English. (Unaspirated [p] can sound like any of them, though not usually [v] to me.)

Vowels- Rounder, laxer. Need to pay special attention to vowel length and pitch. Textbooks say Binisaya (native name for the language family which includes Boholano) has five vowels [ɑ] [e] [i] [o] [u]. [ɪ] is also in there, as well as others.

Connected Speech- Tendency to hesitate moving from coda-[g] or [d] to inital-[k]. I keep trying to hold coda nasals longer than they should be held as well.

Stress- need to identify phrase level stresses and map. Should probably create a meter chart. Also need to determine just how much stress is given to stressed syllables and how stress is primarily expressed. 

Basic Audio Quality- Forgot to unplug my laptop when I recorded.

NS- Much, much harder to relax into what I already know of the language accent when it's this cold outside.

First thing to work on is rhythm. I'm going to try a sing along technique, namely speaking while listening to the recording. I will also create a count. One rhythm difficulty I've encountered so far is caused by the fact that these are song lyrics. I'm defaulting to the rhythm of the song instead of the rhythm of the spoken word version.

Learning to speak like I'm from Boholan.

O.K. Lang. The dialect I've chosen to attempt for this project is Boholano. Boholano is a subset of a language that is variably called Binisaya, Visayan, and Cebuano. The differences between Boholano and Cebuano are fairly minimal, such as pronouncing /nj/ as [nj] or as [nʤ], but to minimize complications, I used material written by a native Boholano recorded by a native Boholano. I don't want to go to all the trouble of mastering the accent just for my cousins to say I sound like I'm from Cebu.

Finally got my archetype delivered and converted to something I could upload. I was having some trouble with that. It's actually just audio, but that's fine with me.

Below are the lyrics that my helpful cousin recorded for me.
Ako kang Paabuton (Buhi sa Kanunay)
Music and lyrics by Justino 'Ning' Romea

I
Buhi sa kanunay
Ug di ko hikalimtan
Sa hilom gibati ko
Ang kamingaw ning dughan

II
Bisag giyam-iran, bisan pa’g gitamay
Molambo ug molipang kay
Ang gugmang matuod di mamatay

Refrain:
Tuhoi intawn ako
Salig sa gisaad ko
Gugma kining way pagkalaya
Bisa’g ibanlas sa luha

III
Kon ang kasing-kasing ko
Sa palad sakiton
Didto sa kalangitan
Ako kang paabuton
(Repeat Refrain and III)
This is a love song about a lost love.