As we age the collagen becomes less in our muscles and connective tissue. The tongue is a comparatively large muscle and goes all the way down the throat. With age the tongue drops further back in the throat and makes our speech less clear and articulate. We also hold a lot of tension in the root of our tongue which makes us use the jaw more to clearly enunciate the words. It should be the tongue for clarity and richness of sound that articulates the words. The tongue can be quicker to respond to the change in text required than the jaw and will create a nicer rounder sound. The lips have a small input into the pronunciation but it is the tongue that has to do most of the work for best effect. It becomes harder to efficiently use the tongue as time goes on and it requires constant effort to keep the tongue from falling back and covering the sound and forcing the jaw to work harder in order to get a sound.
Tongue twisters are an important part of training the tongue to remain agile and accurate and can easily be practiced for a minute or 2 at a time. Little and often is better than one long session.
In order to aim to relax the jaw move it from side to side as you sing.
There are numerous tongue and jaw exercises to help agility and relaxation and these can be found on YouTube. Jaw tension can also contribute to headaches and teeth grinding so it is well worth looking in to this in addition to aiming for an improvement in sound.
A simple yet effective activity to relax the jaw I find is to sit comfortably, close your eyes and focus on the point where your spine meets your scull. This is called the occipital joint. There are numerous very small muscles that cross that joint that also connect to your jaw. Focus on relaxing that joint by merely thinking of relaxing the joint after you have placed your attention on it.
Consider also where in your mouth your tongue is when at rest. Is it making contact with the roof of your mouth, floating in the middle or stuck to the bottom of your mouth?
Aim to lift the tongue so that it is making contact with the roof of your mouth. An added bonus of doing this frequently is that it will help prevent the top jaw from dropping back. Part of the top jaw is connected to the skull via a cartilage joint and that reduces in size with ageing cause the jaw to drop back.
Exercise
Practice saying “Red Lorry Yellow lorry” by just using the tongue. Keep the lips as still as possible by placing your fingers at the side of your mouth so you can feel how much your lips move aiming for that movement to be minimal.
As a bonus a more forward tongue will help reduce a double chin.
