***Nasality: Too Much Nose Can Ruin a Great Speaking Voice

If your voice is plagued with too much nose, then what is hiding inside could be a truly amazing instrument. And since the majority of the population is not aware of and thereby not using their ‘real’ voice, the majority of the population does not know just how great their speaking voice may be.

Excessive nasality ruins voiced sound because too much sound is vibrating in the nose. The result may be shrill, whiny, reedy, and/or loud to name just a few descriptive adjectives. The result of excessive nasality is never beneficial. If you are sending more than your ‘nasals’ through your nose, you should consider making a change. Nasals are words that contain an m, n, or ng and they will vibrate to some degree in the nose.

The problem with a voice which exhibits a lot of nasal sound is that the non-nasals are heading up in that direction as well. Your non-nasals, which is everything but the 3 nasal sounds, have no business being in your nose.

If your nose vibrates when you say hay, hi or he, then you have nasal issues. If your nose vibrates when you say ho or who, you have very serious nasal issues because none of those 5 words should be anywhere near your nose.

A good exercise for eliminating excess nasality is to first say something you know from memory, greatly exaggerating the sound through your nose. Then say the same thing again along the floor of your mouth. When doing the latter part of this exercise, make sure your mouth is open and your jaw relaxed. Talking along the floor of your mouth means that the back of your tongue is relaxed and not humped up against the soft palate.

[To relax your jaw, 1st close your teeth together and feel the knot of your jaw under your ears. With your hands still in place against the top of your jaw, open your mouth and drop your jaw. You should notice the knot unhinge or relax. This is the position in which your mouth always be, especially when you are talking.]

When practicing the exercise above, pay close attention to the difference in sound between that which is coming through your nose and that which is being enunciated along the floor of your mouth. With persistence you can retrain your inner ear (which is how you think you sound) to hear the difference between excess nasality and normal nasal resonance.