This sound is an "air" sound - a breath sound. It is created through holding the tongue fast against the lower teeth, to first "voice" the sound and then blow breath. As with all sounds, particularly air sounds, a conscious intake of breath is taken in preparation.
A visual image of the S sound can be the forming of a vertical wavy line through extended arms and hands in front of ourselves.
In Goethe's classic Fairy Tale The Green Snake and The Beautiful Lily the character of the Green Snake has an earthly bridging quality. The same can be said of the consonant S in terms of the speech sound. This Blog contains readings of this Fairy Tale.
The S can either be a single sound or with the consonant h a combined sound, another air sound. Respective examples are in the words "sit" and "shore" - as in land adjacent to the sea. The picture-image of "sit" is an immediate physical activity while the picture image of the word "shore" adjacent to a sea should create imagination of a length of land needing, encouraging a corresponding length in the sound S.
A good way to experience sounds is through practising exercises and creating short texts and phrases to enhance our agility and creativity in forming speech. The following exercises can help practise forming short and long speech sounds. For shorter sounds - Curtsey Betsy jets cleric lastly light skeptic Curtsey cressets Betsy jets cleric lastly plotless light sceptic. For longer sounds - See silvery sails on fleecy waves. The words in these exercises have no meaning. They are vehicles to exercises consonantal and vowel sounds. They were created by Dr Rudolf Steiner.
An example of phrases, a text, to experiment forming the single s and combined sh sounds is:
Heights of Scafell Pike and Striding Edge in mid-day Sun,
Irish Sea shimmering,
white wispy cirrus clouds, sitting high in the sky,
foretelling showers to come.
For the purpose of having picture-images from which to speak Scafell Pike, at nearly 1000 metres, is the highest mountain in England. Striding Edge forms a scramble to the top of Helvellyn another mountain, in the same area. We love walking the hills!
In this descriptive text the consonant S is central to: forming the names of mountains and ridges - Scafell Pike and Striding Edge; the name of the adjacent sea - Irish Sea; the movement of "shimmering"; plural and colouring of "white wisps of cirrus clouds"; enabling sufficient length of the "sh" sound to help shape the images for "foretelling showers to come" - the sound S having, as described earlier, a real bridging quality.
I have created a sound recording to go with this post encompassing the above which will become attached to this Post shortly.
I wish you well with experimenting with this sound. Please tell me and others who visit this Blog how you get on.
