Words that pack a punch or are slightly more sinister owe their effect to the vowels and consonants they use.
Halloween is full of creepy clauses, shivering shadows, cackling witches and black cats.
Long vowels in laugh, spooky, creepy, ghoul and haunted; short vowels pop out in bats, skulls and blood. Diphthongs hide away in graveyards, slimy and ghosts.
“Trick or treat” is a wonderfully catchy phrase to chant out loud to householders willing to open their doors to local children who are on the hunt for Halloween goodies. Before trick-or-treating, there was an event on All Saints’ Day (1st November) called souling, where children and those in need would travel door-to-door to receive soul cakes. This practice dates back to the Middle Ages and was common until the early 20th century in England.
This month’s newsletter is an opportunity to really sound out those creepy words, making the most of the strong plosive sounds which begin the word, appear in the middle or finish off the word with power! ‘Trick’ or ‘Treat’, for example, each begin and end with an unvoiced powerful plosive (t-k or t-t), which can be extremely effective in eliciting sweets from neighbours (especially when wearing a black bin bag, some green face paint and in possession of a bushy broom).
Other great Halloween words that sound so effective when spoken aloud are skeleton, vampire and spider. Making the most of the plosive sounds again, in ‘sKeleTon’; then the sharp contrast in the softer V and M before the big explosive P at the end, in VamPire and finally, the unvoiced S is followed by unvoiced plosive P and finished off with the D in sPiDer! The S sound can be really effective in creating an atmosphere when it’s made slightly longer than usual.
Here are a few fun Halloween sentences to get your fangs around – try them out loud and make the most of their spooky sounds:
- The devil’s skull was filled with soft cobwebs clinging to the sockets of the sunken eyes.
- Bats, spiders and a solitary black cat crawled from the depths of the witches’ putrid moss covered cauldron.
- The luminous skeleton costume attracted the ghostly webs to gather in a ghastly mesh of sickly green.
When we speak, it’s a good idea to examine the real sounds contained within words to achieve their best effect – even in everyday speech. These fun sentences can be a springboard to using your articulators more effectively and really getting your tongue around some unusual words. This will help to wake up your voice to new opportunities and make your speech more compelling.
For more information about how to speak more effectively, improve your English accent or to get more confident in speaking in front of other people, please get in touch for an informal chat.
In the meantime, Happy Halloween!