***Too Much Nose in Speaking Is Not a Good Thing!

Excessive nasality or too much nose in speaking definitely has a negative impact on your listeners. A whiny voice can be shrill and is much akin to nails on a blackboard. The good news is that you can eliminate the excess nasal sounds in your voice if you practice and retrain your ‘inner ear’ to hear the difference. While all languages vary as far as true nasals, in the English language, we have 3 sounds which indeed should vibrate in the nose: the n, m, and ng sounds. What this means is that any word which contains 1 or more of those nasals will produce some vibration in your nose. The problem with excess nasality is that other sounds are going up through the nose as well – particularly the long e and long a vowels in certain areas of the United States and Canada. To see if you are nasal, very gently place your index finger on each side of your nose. Do not squeeze your nose, just touch it. Say the word, tea. Did you feel any vibration? If so, you might consider working on stopping that practice. I recently had a client from Italy who sent me his ‘before’ recording. He wanted my opinion about his voice. This man’s voice was quite nasal and high-pitched. I told him was that there were 2 things he should do to eliminate the excessive nasality:

1. Do some nasality exercises. One of the best exercises is to exaggerate saying the word tea by sending it up through your nose. (Yes, it will sound silly.) Then open your mouth, unclench your jaw, and try saying the same word again along the floor of your mouth. Often excess nasality is caused by a tight or locked jaw. When you learn to loosen your jaw and enunciate your words along the floor of your mouth instead of sending them up through your nose, you will notice quite a difference in the sound. Then practice the same exercise using other words that have the excessive nasal sound.

2. Discover your ‘real’ voice – that richer, warmer sound – which is hiding in your chest cavity. In doing so, you will find that your change in voice placement will also help decrease the excess nasal whine. It is amazing to hear the difference with this voice training technique.

Excessive nasality mars a dynamic speaking voice. Get your nose out of your voice and you will be surprised by what you hear!