This article was originally written in Turkish and has been translated into English with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The translation may contain errors; the original Turkish version is the authoritative text.
I have already explained ways of overcoming the three psychological problems we face when speaking: fear, embarrassment and nervousness. Now I will talk about another factor that affects us when we speak or sing: speaking too fast or too slowly.
If we think of the speaker as a transmitter and the listener as a receiver, these two devices must be in harmony for communication between them to be healthy.
Speech has a rhythm, and the listener has a rhythm at which they can understand it. If there is a mismatch between these rhythms, both sides run into problems, and the cause of this mismatch is usually that the speaker’s rhythm is wrong.
(First of all, I think it is worth pointing out that to be easily understood, the number of words spoken should be between 125 and 150 per minute.)
Some people speak fast. These people have two problems. The first is not being understood. A person who speaks fast is often not understood by listeners because they do not form the sounds correctly, or distort them. Because they do not use their lips well, letters and words are only half understood. Moreover, even if this person does use their lips well, the listener has their own rhythm of listening and perceiving. Listening to someone who speaks faster than this rhythm is very tiring for the listener. They make a great effort to understand the speaker; after a while they become tired, their attention wanders and they give up listening.
Other people, unlike fast speakers, speak very slowly. The words come out of their mouth so slowly that after a while listening to them becomes torture, because attention wanders. And if, because of how slowly the person speaks, you can already guess their next word from what they are saying, the speech becomes unbearable for you. Just as the listener makes an effort to follow someone who speaks fast, they make the same effort to follow someone who speaks slowly. Over time, the speech weighs on the listener and causes discomfort, and they give up listening.
Both fast and slow speech are problems that can be corrected, but the person must be aware of them.
Take any piece of writing; it does not matter if it is not very long. Put a clock with a second hand beside you. Read the text in a normal voice into a recording device. Try not to go below 125 words or above 150 words per minute. Then listen to the recording of what you have read.
Do this twice a day. If you are a fast speaker, this rhythm may feel slow to you; or if you are a slow speaker, you may feel you are speaking very fast. Keep going, because breaking this habit can take time. Meanwhile, as I explained in my earlier articles, you should not give up the lip-laziness exercises or the use of diaphragmatic breathing. Have no doubt that this work will lead you to success.