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Vowel Prefix Tool
Tactical Tools (Word prefixes and linkages)
​AaHello everyone, and welcome back to another insightful video from the Book Stop Stuttering – How to Rewire Your Brain for Fluent Speech: The StutterMind Neuroscience Protocol. In this video, we're diving into another Tool to avoid any stutter – the Vowel Prefix Tool.
Let's start by breaking down what exactly the Vowel Prefix Tool is and how it works.
Vowels are speech sounds where air vibrates the vocal cords and leaves the mouth without any blockage by the tongue, lips, or throat. In English, vowels are represented by the letters AEIOU and sometimes Y.
Now, a prefix is a sound added to the beginning of a word. With the Vowel Prefix Tool, we're essentially adding a vowel sound before the first letter or syllable of a feared word, shifting the challenging sound from the beginning to the middle of the word.
Take a deep belly breath and begin exhaling while vibrating your vocal cords to make a vowel sound. Put your fingers on your throat and you can feel your vocal cords vibrating. Without stopping the vibration, seamlessly transition to the first sound of the word. The key here is to maintain continuous vocal cord vibration with no break between the vowel prefix and the word's initial sound.
This technique effectively moves the challenging sound away from the word's start, where stutters mostly occur, to the middle, making it easier to say without stuttering. Words like "apple," "elephant," and "ice cream" become "aapple," "aelephant," and "aice cream."
Now listen how I seamlessly add a Vowel Prefix to first letters and syllables beginning with a soft consonant or vowel as I read from The Caterpillar Passage:
Do you like aaamusement parks? uuWell, I sure do. To aaamuse myself, I went twice last spring. My most uumemorable moment was riding on the Caterpillar, which is a gigantic aarollercoaster high above the ground. uuWhen I saw how high the Caterpillar aarose into the bright blue sky iiI knew it was for me.
Easy, right?!
Many speech therapists advise against using a prefix, fearing it may lead to repeated or elongated sounds resembling a stutter. However, when used effectively, the Vowel Prefix Tool will help avoid stutters and rewire your brain for fluent speech.
Did you notice how I seamlessly used the Vowel Prefix Tool to start this video? I said "AaHello everyone," adding and linking an "Aa" prefix to the word “Hello” to start the sentence. It's very subtle and challenging for the listener to detect, so use this tool with confidence.
Thank you for watching, and I wish you all the best on your journey to fluent speech!
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