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Does your voice change with the language? | ||
Tags: Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5897 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 17 of 53 17 October 2011 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm just learning. I try to think of it as pure mimicry, focusing on how fast a language is spoken and the spacing of those sounds. I try to keep my voice as even as possible. Of course I could pitch my voice any way I please -- but it would only make people question my emotional state. I think inflection and tonality follow quite naturally in any language, but for me, being at the point that I am, rate of speech is the key. I don't think a Japanese (for example) would care whether I speak high or low. What matters is whether it's fast enough to conform to the way they're used to hearing their language spoken.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 53 17 October 2011 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with numerodex: I have made videos in many languages, and I probably should sound more different in those languages than I do.
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| pj1991 Newbie United States Joined 4765 days ago 29 posts - 49 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 19 of 53 17 October 2011 at 3:45am | IP Logged | ||
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My voice gets a little bit higher when I speak French, I was always thought it was just me haha. I've tried to suppress it in the past but my pronunciation suffers quite a bit when I'm not speaking naturally so I learned to just go with it. Glad to know it seems to be a common thing and nothing to be self conscious about.
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5019 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 53 17 October 2011 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I naturally have quite a deep and "throaty" voice, so I have to make a very conscious effort to speak with a higher pitch in French just so I sound at least a bit like a proper French speaker and can be understood. It's not easy, but I think for learning most languages there's an element of "re-learning to speak", not just with new sounds and rhythms but also tone of voice. I did find my voice quite suited to Russian when I studied that though, and I've been told I'd probably speak German quite well...
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4640 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 21 of 53 17 October 2011 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
This might be true, but I would find it surprising. Do you know many British speakers in person, or are you basing this experience on movies and TV? I wonder if this perception is because of the kind of Britons you've heard. If listening to Blair and Bush together, then yes, Blair had the lighter voice. This was actually one of the reasons I probably subconsciously never took him very seriously (not the only reason, but that's off-topic). I wonder if people are familiar with how Hugh Laurie speaks when he uses a British accent, compared to the American one he uses on "House"? If they only previously knew him from "Jeeves and Wooster", where he played "an upper class twit". then he has a pretty light voice, reflecting his lightweight character. When he is speaking as himself (e.g. in interviews or documentaries) he is noticeably deeper. I wouldn't think the late Richard Burton, or the late Stanley Baker, or Sean Connery had particularly light voices, and Tom Jones' voice is noticeably deep. (Interestingly, none of those is English). I'm trying to think of some really deep-voiced Englishmen that everyone might have heard of, and not succeeding... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5085 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 22 of 53 17 October 2011 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Alan Rickman has quite a deep voice. As does Christopher Lee.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5193 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 23 of 53 17 October 2011 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would expect a person's personality or behaviour to be slightly different in different languages a person knows well, because who you are within a given culture implies a certain type of behaviour and this changes depending on the culture.
However, I'm very skeptical of claims that people would speak a given language with a higher or lower pitch. Although physiological differences might explain why Swedish women may have a lower pitched voice than, say, Vietnamese women, this would only be an average and there will always be Vietnamese women with a lower voice than other Swedish women. Another poster said British people speak with a higher voice than Americans, but I always thought it was the opposite -- chances are we are both wrong. It's probably the same. I also feel this average height would vary within the US and the UK, but then again, I could be wrong. Human voice only covers a very short spectrum and I doubt we'd find the average to vary too much -- if anything, the differences may not even be perceptible to human ears. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5038 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 24 of 53 18 October 2011 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||
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My first hint about this came from my father. He told me to say something in English and in Spanish, pronouncing correctly (i.e. with the right accents), and when I did he automatically said 'yes, your voice changes too. Why?', 'too' referring to my English teacher, a co-worker of his at the time.
Over time, or if/when you get really proficient, these changes should become more or less obvious and easy to spot and explain depending on your languages. For example, Spanish is spoken using more your throat and the back of your mouth in comparison to English. So, the average Spanish conversation naturally sounds a bit louder than its English counterpart, and a very common complain of Spanish students of English is that English speakers are more difficult to hear in the first place than they are to understand. OTOH pitch range is wider in English than it is in Spanish, which leads to Spaniards referring to English as 'lilting'. The reverse POV of the same phenomenon would be the 'bored effect' of Spanish students' English as referred by Michael Swan, if you won't take my teacher's word for it. Voice changes are inextricably linked to differences between the languages. My voice also changes slightly when speaking German because its vowels are deeper, and it's stress-timed, as opposed to Spanish. If you want to speak passably well, you have to accommodate all that, and your voice will necessarily change if your mother tongue is different enough. I take my Russian friends' word that my accent and pronunciation are very good even when I practice next to nothing: vowels and prosody are similar enough that my first order approximation to them is good enough and I can focus on other aspects of the language while the remaining details fall into place by themselves with practice. With Russian vowels and prosody this close to Spanish, it's only natural my Russian friends' voices don't change a lot (but they change a little) when speaking Spanish, so I don't think it will change much when I finally begin to speak Russian for real. We'll see :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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