Performing on stage with a foreign language like English is never easy, especially for singers and actors. They are never really comfortable performing on stage in a foreign language, because they are struggling to make the correct sounds as well as trying to remember the lines.
This is nerve-wracking and causes them to lose confidence on stage, usually at the expense of a good performance. Learning the sounds of a language is a serious challenge but comes with a serious reward.
[Israeli] singers feel comfortable when singing in their Native language because they can fully express themselves and not have to worry about accent barriers. However, singing in English is a challenge because most Israeli students have almost no diction classes and very little speech and accent training by the time they are out of High School and University. Little emphasis is put on learning the sounds of English and how to say them accurately. As a result, most [Israeli] speakers are likely to mix the sounds of their native language and speak English with a heavy accent and a lot of mispronunciation.
IPA – International Phonetic Alphabet
A helpful tool for singers is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) because it enables them to see every sound in a word and to eventually hear how to pronounce it. By seeing the word in IPA, you can pronounce it correctly with a little bit of practice and avoid bad accent habits.
Take the word “The” for example: Many Israeli singers sing “De” instead of “The“ because Hebrew doesn’t have the phoneme “Th” which is therefore incorrectly replaced with “D”. “The” in IPA is written /ði/. By seeing how the phoneme “th” is spelled and understanding it, you can then learn how to pronounce it correctly.
Eventually you start to hear the word in your head after you see how it is spelled in IPA. (For more examples check out: https://saywhat-now.com/talkenglish/
Accent training consists of various steps but the reward is for a lifetime! Once you get a feel for the sounds, how they are spelled and what the differences are, many barriers start to slowly fade away and Israeli singers will start to feel comfortable on stage singing in English!
