ABSTRACT
The accent's melodic play is strongly influenced by French but Senegalese is much more melodically subdued. From a buoyant chest resonance, the sound travels through a pharynx that can be more or less narrowed, depending on the speaker. However, there will always be some narrowing to create the characteristic pharyngeal twang of the accent. The soft palate is fairly lifted; this creates a hypo-nasality that travels into a very strong sinus resonance. By raising the middle of the tongue, resonance gets focused on the middle-back of the hard palate. Most often the resonance gets lidded in the sinuses, but for some speakers it can travel up into the temples for a more brassy and bright sound. When one listens to Marietu, in contrast with the other speakers, one will hear that she has a relatively strong French accent.
