|
|
Do races have different voices?
Anomaly: "Do those same people tell you that people from Chicago have a "nasal sounding voice", even though what they hear is the raising or diphthongization of /æ/, as well as the other features of the Northern cities vowel shift, which have nothing to do with nasality at all? "
No, but I can tell you that Chicagoans—and their NCVS cousins—sound nasal, because they ARE! Any kind of raised vowel is necessarily aspirated partially through the nasal cavity, Anomaly. Think about it—it has to be aspirated through either the mouth or the nose, doesn't it?
If I might be allowed to go off on a tangent for a moment: Northern and Western voices seem "jaw-lazy", while Southern voices seem "lip-lazy"...
Back to the topic...
>> I must say voice, a part of physical attributes, may have wel contributed to the image of people, or a race if you call it <<
No, you're not using the word "race" in the same way other people above were using it. By race, you meant more like nationality or even culture.
>> Any kind of raised vowel is necessarily aspirated partially through the nasal cavity <<
What do you mean by "any kind of raised vowel"? How is raising vowel 1 to vowel 2, and different than just pronouncing vowel 2? How does that make the vowel acquire nasalization? For example, how would pronouncing "bad" how others pronounce "bed" make the vowel any more nasal? And how does one "partially aspirate a vowel"? I'm not sure if I follow. The only definition of aspiration that I'm familiar with is "the release of a strong burst of air after some obstruents." (Wikipedia).
Anomaly, some of the air goes through the nose. Not all—some. Most of the air still comes through the mouth.
If you turn the "bad" into "bed", then into "bead", progressively more air goes through the nostrils. Not much more, but still more.
If you go the opposite direction, viz., "bead", then "bed", then "bad", then "bahd", and you'll feel your throat opening up more and letting more air go through the mouth, instead of the nasal passages.
This leads to the inevitable conclusion that "bahd" sounds less nasal than "bead".
>>No, you're not using the word "race" in the same way other people above were using it. By race, you meant more like nationality or even culture.
Not that much. Maybe relevant, but I don't think some European peoples should speak very differently from some others, for example.
Since the de facto main topic doesn't seem to be "do races(*) have accent" but really "do Black people have an innate accent", I will talk about the hypothesis that there is no such thing as an innate difference in voice quality between Black and White people, based on some examples in famous French Black people.
We have a number of Black people in France, partly due to migrations of francophones subsaharian Africans from former French colonies to France, and partly due to migrations of slave descendants from oversea French territories to metropolitan France.
It's interesting to notice — but hardly surprising IMHO — that there is absolutely little to nothing remarkable in the accent of some famous Black people in France:
Mc Solaar and Abd Al Malik are famous French rappers. The only thing a standard Parisian French speaker could notice about the way they speak isn't their voice, but a slightly higher tonicity in stressed syllables. Could it be an innate feature? It seems improbable that being able to realize syllables with high-tonicity in stress level could prevent you from toning it down a little bit. He who can do more, can do less.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgTKuYo3Bk0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhiBKmOKc0Y
Even more convincing when it comes to our hypothesis are Harry Roselmack and Audrey Pulvar's accent. Both are current or former French news anchors. Their type of accent is hypercorrected Parisian French. Nothing whatsoever about their voice quality, frequency, modulation, and timber is any different from White people speaking with the same accent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c15kGA3eKos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdbpihAHpV0
These examples seem to suggest that there is no skin-color determined voice quality in the human species. But I'd be very interested to read any scientific findings infirming or confirming my humble, necessarily limited observations...
* I'll pretend to accept for a moment the very American idea that "races" are anything but arbitrary socially defined groups. This idea isn't valid, however, as far as human genetics is concerned.
"I'll pretend to accept for a moment the very American idea that "races" are anything but arbitrary socially defined groups. This idea isn't valid, however, as far as human genetics is concerned."
Invite d'honneur, this notion simply isn't true.
When the human species fanned out of Africa, over time its DNA fragmented into three distinct variations; one of the variations further fragmented, leaving a fourth variation. In terms of DNA fragmentation, there are four "races", to wit: Negroid, Northern European, Southern European, and Mongoloid.
AncestryDNA.com
I need to make a correction.
The company to which I referred, AncestrybyDNA.com, has ceased operations, an apparent victim of the recession...
Not all black people have the distinctive resonant quality to their voice -- lots of them don't.* If they don't have any AAVE coloring their accent, you can't tell at all. And some whites even have it on occasion -- not common, but it happens. But when you do hear it, it's more likely to be coming out of a black person! It's just an accident of the way the mouth and nasal cavities are formed, I'm sure, and I don't know why people get all offended about it. Physical attributes vary among different groups, and among individuals, and that's just a natural fact.
*And that's a pity, because it actually sounds really nice.
"and timber is any different from White people speaking with the same accent."
I don't know about that. There is a richness in his timbre that a lot of "white" people lack. But that's just one person. Richness is a good quality.
Not skin, but characteristics like the size of the vocal cords, the resonating cavities, and the size of the person may determine some of this. In the states and in France, there is some mixing of ethnic groups, so who can say what a "black" voice sounds like every time. Usually, I can tell the voice of an African French speaker, but that's not the same as someone who grew up in Paris. That's accent and resonance.
The only way to know would be to listen to various voices without showing the face of the speaker and to do this with several languages.
>>Not skin, but characteristics like the size of the vocal cords, the resonating cavities, and the size of the person may determine some of this.
I can't tell exactly. I'm not an expert. But in general, I found German girls usually have a far lower pitch than Chinese girls, though still higher than mine for gender reasons.
>>The only way to know would be to listen to various voices without showing the face of the speaker and to do this with several languages.
But I also find some German dialects having a higher pitch (or more exactly the ending intonation) than Hochdeutsch, even in men. And as I tested earlier this year, I do have a higher pitch in Mandarin. Not to mention my beginner's German, my English also changed a bit, perhaps owing to some interference of German. I didn't acquire any English in Germany from native speakers, so I may well have based my acquisition on German. Note that I separate Chinese language(s) from others very strictly, so Mandarin can't have affected my English at all. But in general, I'd say I speak all my foreign languages at a higher pitch than Cantonese. And in general, my nature offers me a slightly higher pitch than most Chinese guys, and almost all foreign guys I met. If there are special differences, usually it's largely attitudinal, not physical (like my first homosexual acquaintance has a notably higher pitch than every other guy).
Please read some more, people!
It seems like none of you has ever heard about the fact that from a genetical point of view, there certainly is no such thing as races (like breeds with animals) amongst humans.
Although what is referred to as human races, there are cetainly different approaches to raise a voice, and some people have a better lobby than others. Unfortunately.
Maybe you better think about that, why that is, and how we could end that.
So that one day we don´t think about the tone or height of a voice (apart from music) but rather about the raising of the voice of humanity.
Or, creatively: What would the voice of humanity sound like, if you where to give it a sound, in, say, a movie or a video game?
|