changing your voice

Discussion in 'Off Topic' started by biTsar, Sep 12, 2014.

  1. biTsar

    biTsar Active Member VIP member

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    From the transgender community. What they do is somewhat mind blowing,

    whether it has application to language learning I can't say.
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  2. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    lol - that's awesome
  3. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Active Member

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    Instead of watching that I googled and found a wikipedia article on this topic. It mentions the overlap between male and female vocal ranges, which is the likely result of such voice therapy, i.e. a kind of androgynous middle. As biTsar says, I am not sure there is much application for others without their motivation for same. However for men perhaps there is for languages like Japanese, since I have frequently read that Japanese find loud speaking as well as large arm movements, etc. to be offensive. So perhaps a man might learn to "tone it down".
  4. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    That's an interesting idea. Let me take it a little further. You know how people really try to change to become one with their target language? Gestures, over the top accent, culture, the way they dress, etc? Benny wrote a whole chapter about this in his book. How about becoming a different gender for a given target language - anybody up for it?
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  5. biTsar

    biTsar Active Member VIP member

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    Starting at about 27 seconds in that video and ending at 40 seconds is all you need to see. 13 seconds of your life, haha. I'll save you even more time -- I've watched a bunch of these videos; some transgender folk speak perfectly in their target gender, others retain varying degrees of an accent. In the video above it seems her original male voice now has a female accent -- she's more proficient as a she than a he.
  6. kikenyoy

    kikenyoy Administrator Staff Member

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    I hope the ladyboys here don't find this video.
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  7. Wise owl chick

    Wise owl chick Active Member

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    the video is silent on my iPad :-(
  8. Stelle

    Stelle Active Member VIP member

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    Very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

    ?
  9. kikenyoy

    kikenyoy Administrator Staff Member

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    Most ladyboys can be determined by sight, but if not then the voice is usually a give away. Most are honest about their past but not all are and I like to know who I'm potentially getting involved with.
  10. Cainntear

    Cainntear Active Member VIP member

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    Actually, one of the things that makes Tiffany's voice seem most convincing is probably a side-effect of the strain warned about in the Wikipedia article and mentioned in the video (along with a lot of clearing of the throat) -- creaking.

    There's a way of using the vocal chords called "vocal fry" -- it allows you to "creak" your voice lower than you can use the vocal chords in normal speech. Traditional, it was something only shy or underconfident girls tended to do, but it has become popular recently through "valley girl" speech on teenage TV, Tiffany's girl-voice tends to creak when she hits the lower end of it, which makes it appear as though she's hit the absolute bottom of her range. If that was a conscious modification, I would applaud it, but from the fact that she never mentions it, I have to assume it's a symptom of strain. As the WP article says, that can lead to the formation of nodules, so always consult a specialist if you want to do any major modifications to the way you speak.

    Careful with your voice, people... you've only got one.
  11. hrhenry

    hrhenry Member VIP member

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    Actually, this being a female thing is something of a myth. It's certainly more noticeable in women - and they tend to get more negative press because of it, but plenty of men do it too.

    NPR (and all its state affiliates) in the US is full of male announcers that exhibit vocal fry.

    R.
    ==
  12. BAnna

    BAnna Active Member VIP member

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    I think the self-talk (while doing the dishes in this case), "practice-practice-practice" and the advice to get feedback from others all make lots of sense for a language learner. Her comments about being self-conscious around people you know was interesting. I wonder if that's part of what makes immersion so helpful: you interact with people you've never met before, rather than classmates or a teacher (maybe there's a worry there they are somehow judging your abilities?). I could also definitely relate to the comment about conscious speaking being difficult to sustain when talking/thinking in depth about a topic. In her case it was maintaining the "girl voice", for me it's maintaining the correct grammar and vocabulary.

    On a tenuosly related side note, one of my German skype partners said to me once that it seemed to her that English-speaking women have higher pitched voices than German women, and that she thought English-speaking men tend to speak with more resonance than German men. I have no idea if this is true or not...and I can't remember if it was all native English-speakers or some subset. I'm sure there's some research study out there somewhere about gender differences in languages around the world.
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  13. Wise owl chick

    Wise owl chick Active Member

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    One of my teacher has said that mostly the people have a higher voice when they are stressed, and for example to speak in a foreign language can be the stress, therefore the people have a lower pitch in their native language.

    for me, English sound like a wider pitch and intonation language, more variety. Dutch depend of the region, west Netherlands Dutch is absolutely ugly and especially the intonation sound very rude and aggressive. South Netherlands intonation is softer and not rude. German intonation seems not so varied. The German ladies on the German advertisements always talk with a fake sound, they don't speak like this when they're not in the advertisements. the Flemish ladies do this also, it's weird.

    On my iPad the video is silent, but later I will watch it on my laptop. I don't think that I know a transgender person.
  14. pensulo

    pensulo Member VIP member

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    English is spoken quite high up IMHO, especially American English which is quite "nasal" compared to Australian English. I notice a lot of foreigners speak English at a higher register (or whatever you want to call it) than in their native language. I have a very deep voice, and when I speak Serbian to my parents friends will make comments like I dropped the bass :p I also hear it when I listen to say Putin speak in Russian compared to when he speaks in English.

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