My Star Student in Articulation and Accent Reduction

When I'm not teaching accent reduction, I like to teach my African Grey, Valentina Diniro how to speak, clear articulate English. Valentina is 8 years old with a 500 word vocabulary. (Of course, what can you expect? Her mommy is a speech and English teacher!)

Valentina has mastered those S and Z sounds that get confusing to Spanish Speakers. In English, we like to fool people and use an S in spelling the word, and a Z in saying the word. Valentina especially likes these two sounds.

For example, words like his, is, as, was, design, pleasant, all have a Z sound! Words like store, receive, amiss, and lonesome all have an S sound.

Then English can really get confusing because we give Cs and Xs a S sound also: words like icy, race, decimal, excellent all have an S sound.

So English is not spoken like it is written, and that's why it's confusing to people who speak English as a second language.

But of course, Valentina Diniro can't read, so she only knows the sounds. Since she is a perfectionist in pronunciation, as most African Greys are, she gets mad and screams if she pronounces the word wrong. But mommy has a lot of patience, so we practice until she gets it right, just like I do with my accent reduction clients.

Valentina especially likes combining the S sound with a consonant. Her favorite words are special, store, taps, cats. She loves to say, "You're wistling TAPS!" She often says, "You're special!" Then follows it with "Go to the pet store!"

When I'm off coaching or teaching classes, Valentina goes to her own "job". I like to say she's in the entertainment business. I take her to a nursing home, where she has her own cage in the lobby, and talks to the residents, the staff, the ambulance drivers, and the UPS people all day long. Everyone loves her, and she loves them. She's been going there for 8 years, since she was 6 months old. She knows everybody's names, and loves to have her friends call her on her own "cell phone" sounds. (She has about 10 different ringtones.)

Once I taught a speech class with Valentina on my head. I found out that wasn't (NOTE THE Z SOUND) a good idea. While Valentina is an excellent talker... she's not a very good listener, and totally missed my lecture by piping out the song "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star!

Here are some more tricky Z sound words:
boys, fleas, please, rise, and whose...