Had you asked me 10 years ago what words come up when I think of the word ‘foreigner’ I would have probably said: Difficulty, shame, struggle, barriers, accent.
Many things have changed for me in the past decade. And I’m not only talking about my accent.
As my work enabled me to dive deep into the essence of being different and ‘foreign’ by working with people who struggle not just with expressing themselves in a different language but also in dealing with cultural differences, different mentality and worldview – I realized how much strength, ambition and power is actually associated with being a foreigner.
I also came to terms with who I am and what I have to bring to the table as someone who is not an all-American speech coach.
So, if you asked the same question today I would say that ‘foreigner’ means to me courage, uniqueness, history, heritage, accomplishment.
What does it mean to you?
TRANSCRIPT
Hey guys, it’s Hadar and
this is the Accent’s Way
and today Abed Rahim
asked me to talk about
the word foreigner.
He says that he keeps
saying it as ‘for-reign-er’
and in fact, I’ve heard a
lot of people saying it this way
and I’ve heard ‘for-rain-er’ as well
or ‘for-en-er’ and you know what,
I have one word for you, ‘schwa’.
Because it’s all one big schwa.
There is no A and there
is no eh, it’s all reduced
except for the first
syllable so let’s start.
You begin with the ‘for’ as
in ‘door’, as in ‘norm’, okay?
‘For’, you start with an F sound
and then create an aw sound
by dropping jaw, raising
the back of the tongue
and rounding the lips just a bit.
‘Faw’, make sure not to bring
the tongue up for the R
too quickly ’cause then it’s
gonna sound like ‘furner’,
‘furener’, and that’s a different sound
and the whole word will sound
just like one big R, okay?
So, drop your jaw, keep
your tongue down, faw, faw,
and then bring the tongue
up, round your lips,
make sure that the sides
of the tongue touch
the insides of the upper teeth, ruh,
and release it to a schwa. ruh
That’s it, that’s the
middle syllable, ruh.
So simple, so short.
Faw-ruh, ruh, faw-ruh-n’r.
So that’s an N shound, another
schwa blended with the R,
so here you do wanna bring
the tongue up immediately
after the N, n’r, n’r.
It’s not ‘ner’, there is no ‘eh’ sound here.
N’r, faw-ruh-n’r.
Some people may pronounce
it with a more open sound,
fah, fah-ruh-n’r, okay?
But most people will reduce
it and round the lips
for an aw is in ‘door’.
Foreigner.
Foreigner, or on the other
hand we have the word foreign.
I’m speaking a foreign language.
Or she’s a foreigner.
Or I’m no longer a foreigner.
Okay, that’s it, I think this
word is relevant for all of us
’cause we’re all
foreigners and we are proud
of being a foreigner so we
need to know how to say it.
Foreign.
Okay, so, that’s it.
Thank you for watching,
please share this video
with your friends if you liked it
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website to check it out
and get more great stuff
that is just sitting
and waiting for you there, okay?
So go check it out.
Have a great week and I will see you next week
in the next video.
Bye.