Is it really possible to change your style of speaking so that you stop using the verbal fillers um and you know? Yes, you can. Martha relates her experience with dialect-coach-to-the-stars Sam Chwat. He was adamant that by catching ourselves every time we use that conversational crutch, we can consciously train ourselves to avoid it. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Train Away Verbal Fillers”
I was saddened recently to learn of the death of someone who worked a lot with accents and regional dialects. His name was Sam Schwa, that’s C-H-W-A-T, Sam Schwa. He was a New York City speech pathologist, and he made a name for himself working with a lot of Hollywood movie stars. He helped Julia Roberts lose her strong Southern drawl. And he also helped Shakira learn to do crossover songs in English without such a strong accent. Very interesting. Sam Schwa died recently at the age of 57. He had lymphoma. And as it happens, I had several phone interviews with Sam earlier this year for a magazine article I was writing about changing one’s speaking style. And I had really fascinating conversations with him.
If there’s one thing that I will remember about them, Grant, it’s the fact that he was absolutely emphatic that it is possible to make a big change in the way you normally speak if, number one, you’re motivated, and if, number two, you monitor your own speech and correct yourself every single time you make a mistake.
Right.
And one of the things we talked about, for example, was the habit of inserting way too many likes and ums and errs, those disfluencies into everyday speech. And as you well know, I certainly use a lot of those. So I asked him over the phone what he’d do to help me cut down on the number of ums and you knows in my own casual speech. And Sam said that if he were working with me, he’d start by making me stop every single time I said one of those. He said I’d do it just like a metronome every single time.
And the funny thing was that as our conversation continued on the phone, he did just that. He was relentless, stopping me each time I said, or. And what was really remarkable to me is that it didn’t take all that long before I was stopping on my own. I could feel it working. I could hear it working. And I’ll never forget that sense of having my fundamental speech pattern changing. And I remember feeling exhausted by the end of that conversation because I was concentrating so hard. But it was a satisfying little taste of what can happen if you really focus on the way you’re speaking.
So when I think of Sam Schwa, I’ll think about those invigorating conversations I had with him and that little glimpse of what that process could be like and what work it must be to learn a different dialect for a role. Or if you’re coming to English as a second or third or fourth language, what kind of work it takes to try to adapt the way you speak.
You’d like to share your memories of someone who affected you, someone who had something to do with why you’re interested in language, why you’re a thinker, a reader, a writer, someone who is a self-educator, give us a call 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
