Week 5 Workshop: What your actors can say

You write your syllable structure as a formula, then read twenty of your own words aloud and fix any you cannot pronounce consistently

25 March 2027

Before the session#

Watch Avatar. Listen to the Na’vi rather than reading the subtitles — you are trying to hear whether it sounds like a system or like a list, which is a judgement you can only make with your ears.

Bring your ten words from week three and ten more.

In the session#

Formulas first. Your syllable structure gets written in the standard notation, optional slots in parentheses, and it has to be specific enough that somebody else could generate a legal word from it without asking you a question. Prose descriptions are not accepted; they are always vaguer than their author thinks.

Then reading aloud, in threes. One person reads, one listens, one writes down what they heard in IPA. The gap between what you meant and what the third person transcribed is what the exercise is designed to show, and it is usually wider than people expect.

Afterwards#

Some of your words will not come through this unchanged. Words you liked will turn out to be unsayable, or sayable only slowly, or indistinguishable from another word at normal speed.

Cut them. Losing vocabulary now costs you less than at any later point, and the alternative is a week twelve text you cannot read aloud.