BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed

Subject: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 07:59 PM

I have been recently (last year or so) 'bothered' by some of the vocal patterns and inflections of some youngish female TV news anchors. Alex Wagner of MSNBC was the one that caused me to Google the issue.
Turns out it is a well known and documented phenomenon. My original search was "young women" "raspy voices" and LO! Many hits...

What is really noted is famous entertainers I don't see much of, like Brittny Spears and a Kardashian or two...etc. But a little looking at links shows it is kinda common.

Scientific American article

from this article at Huffington Post

Why worry about it? In the case of TV news, it simply distracts me from what they are saying. (Alex Wagner is a pretty smart graduate of a high school here in the Wash DC area, and she is far from the worse I have heard, but I still cringe.) Contrast these with Kelly O'Donnell, an NBC Pentagon correspondent, who is always clear & pleasant.

I realize that 'some' aspects of a person's voice are beyond easy control, and those who employ vocal fry and similar sounds may have gone beyond being even ABLE to change.... but I wish stations saw this as an issue and gave on-air positions to those didn't rasp and 'vibrate' when they speak.

(Before you tell ME I'm overreacting, read those articles.)

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 08:22 PM

Is that the sped-up bullfrog sound? Sheesh. Never knew what it was called.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 08:26 PM

Bullfrog? *shrug* It is just a low, vibrating rasp in 'ordinary' speech..often coupled with rising inflection at the end of sentences. (which has been mentioned in thread before). Almost never heard in older women....

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 08:28 PM

We couldn't figure out what "vocal fry" sounds like from the articles but here is a very clear example.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 08:39 PM

That and quacking.   Thank God for remote controls. Do they actually talk like that in real life or is it put on for performances like a kind of make-up?

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 08:48 PM

Bev and Jerry, thank you. Sounds like a 1980 Valley girl who's been further lobotomized. That the sped up bullfrog thing I was talkin' about.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 08:49 PM

McGrath of Harlow: I understand from something I read a few days back that it will be the new BBC standard.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Jeri
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 09:07 PM

Oddly enough, I hardly notice it. I listened to the Scientific American and didn't really react to anything until the announcer said that young women might do it to imitate their "fellow peers". I found that term a bit overly redundant.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 09:28 PM

Not only redundant but repeated unnecessarily. :)

When I was a kid we - my brothers and I - sometimes communicated that way. Using no intelligible words we 'creaked' in each other's faces. Never knew there was a phrase for it. (And I just now tried to replicate it and discovered I no longer can.)

That phenomenon hasn't bothered me - up to now. It will probably become a sore point forthwith - what does bother me is the habit some public personages, not only female, have to kind of squeeze their voices out as they speak. What's up with that!

Oh, I must ask: Who names these phenomena? "vocal fry?

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 09:42 PM

Just to clarify...those extreme examples used by Kardashians and others are just that.. extreme. Alex Wagner sounds like she got 'it' a few years ago in school, but is now just trying to sound like a 'perky', 'with it' educated young woman...leading to residual vocal affectations that even she is not aware of.
What I wonder is IF network executives who choose these women are aware of the vocal issues, and (intentionally or not) lean toward those who exhibit a trendy sound.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Alice
Date: 21 Feb 13 - 10:06 PM

Yes, Bill, I heard on NPR a report on vocal fry in 2011.
The study was reported in The Journal Of Voice in 2011.

http://www.jvoice.org/article/S0892-1997%2811%2900070-1/abstract

It annoys me when I hear it.

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 01:16 AM

Bill - thanks for teaching me the name of this phenomenon. It's bothered me for years too, and some teenage boys do it as well.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 01:21 AM

The Scientific American article mentioned that it is not found in me, but I've heard young male country singers do it masked as a drawl, but it's definitely a vocal fry.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 03:10 PM

i thought it was a vocal exercise used by singers to expand their range and by starting low and slowly going higher work toward the very high warbling sound.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 05:16 PM

I meant "men". not "me"!
I think it's an attempt by young women in the TV news industry to ape the "gravitas" of older male newscasters, such as Walter Cronkite, by artificially deepening their voices. Then it filters down to other women such as college and high-school students.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 05:38 PM

It's a regionalism, not a "bad habit", unless all you Canadians figure that your "oot" thing is a a bad habit, or all you UKers think that funny thing you do with your R's is a speech defect(which I don't, so you don't need to get snippy about it).

It does have a function, which is to provide definition for speech (and singing) in the lower ranges so that it carries better. As those of us with lower voices know, it takes a lot more air to keep your level even in the low ranges than in the high ones.

If I were to speculate, I would say that women in broadcasting use it because it helps keep their volume level even in the lower voice range. Nothing worse than having the bottom drop out at the end of your sentences. And of course, since many of us are addicted to broadcast media, the way people speak in the media affects the way we speak.

I am sure some of you will disagree strongly with my speculations. This is, after all, a life and death issue that merits full examination.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 05:43 PM

Vocal fry - you mean I've been worrying that my young neighbor is going to get throat cancer, but all it is a fad?

I hope so, anyhow.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 06:44 PM

*grin*... more than a 'fad'. It's become a routine sound, like saying 'like' every 4th word, and barely realizing it. The young girls copy the 'cool' ones and the famous ones and some do it 'better' than others.

I suspect that VERY few consciously employ it for specific vocal enhancement. Perhaps a few in broadcasting try for a lower sound, but many end up with just the raspy vibration in their usual register.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: bobad
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 07:23 PM

"unless all you Canadians figure that your "oot" thing is a a bad habit"

I've always wondered where that association of Canadians and that "oot" thing comes from. I am Canadian and have traveled the country from coast to coast and not once have I heard that pronunciation of the word out. Are you sure you're not confusing us with the Scots?

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 07:48 PM

I too have never heard a Canadian say oot. Found the following on the www.


'Canadian pronunciation of "out and about"
Americans typically make fun of Canadians, claiming that "out and about" is pronounced as "oot and aboot" (personally I can't hear it). So if that is the case, what do Americans hear when Canadians actually say "oot and aboot"? What does Canadian "boot" sound like to an American?'


My own question: does boot and out sound the same to you when we say it?

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 08:11 PM

I hear 'something' that is not quite 'oot'.... kind of a slurred rising inflection in "about" that avoids the 'w' sound.

(it is similar to the German pronunciation of W in water. It is not an "F" or a "V" but an in between sound that we hear as F or V.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: gnu
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 08:16 PM

"Vocal fry" and the video.... thank you!!!

It's about time this scourge was identified, classified and named so the BILLIONS of pissed off people can join the fray to tell young girls(and lads)... stop fucking singing when you talk you brain dead little ******. I might add... if you keep doing that, I would like to kick your ass if you keep that inane shit up!!!

What is going on? These kids can't even speak properly because they have so much insecurity they NEED to talk like an idiot?

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 08:27 PM

We gotta a bunch of 'um here in Charlotte but worse... Not only do they sound like frogs but half of them have this irritating staccato cadence to wind down their sentences...

What's that about, anyway...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 09:20 PM

One thing to remember is that what we hear when you speak is not necessarily what you hear.

We (and by that I mean me) hear the difference between the way we say something and the way you say it. That means that you can listen to yourselves night and day for a year and have no idea what it sounds like to me(I mean us). Which is probably as it should be.

I grew up in Michigan, and spent time in Canada, and even worked in Canada with actual Canadians. I can tell you right now that, though in a couple places we are actually only a walking distance apart, we talk real different.

For one thing, you are careful about the sound of letters like "t". Not us. We tend to use a glottal stop instead. That would be the sound of the hyphen in "uh-oh!" In music, it would be a stacatto rest. We also stretch out our vowels, sometimes for two or three syllables. Usually just two. And there is a certain nasality.

If one were pressed for a description, with a view toward helping someone identify it, I would suggest imagining a person with a sinus infection talking to a deaf person.

So we hear "oot" because we're used to "oww' ".

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 09:27 PM

I missed your posts, Bobert and Gnu. What it's about is that pronunciations have changed, and you haven't.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 09:37 PM

Without resorting to the IPA, we have reached an impasse.

Years back I recall a linguistic anthropologist telling us that people from different cultures heard roosters' crows differently. On the off-chance I'd find something on Mr Google I looked. Voila!

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 09:44 PM

PS: As a Canadian, I am not at all offended by any of this. (Of course, as most of the world knows, Canadians are seldom offended by anything, and when we are we apologize at once.) It's interesting more than anything else.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 09:53 PM

That would be another difference, Bruce. Americans tend to be offended by everything;-)
As far as the roosters, it was explained to me that linguistic anthropologists hear things differently. So...

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 10:12 PM

LOLOL

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 10:19 PM

Dogs bark differently in French & Russian also...

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: gnu
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 10:25 PM

"What it's about is that pronunciations have changed, and you haven't."

I will never listen to a brain dead, ill educated little twerp chirp when it talks and accept it. I refuse to accept that human beings talking like lilting birds is something, *I* should "change" to accept. It's not about pronunciations. It's about speech. I talk... they sing... I think it's poor upbringing and poor education.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 10:59 PM

As to 'oot', all I can say is that when I hear a speaker say 'hoooose' I know s/he is Canadian. I like it. I like accents.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 11:05 PM

To most Canucks--I think--house rhymes with louse or spouse.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 11:12 PM

Ahem: an unfortunate choice though I say so myself. I meant to say grouse or spouse.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Feb 13 - 11:16 PM

Uh, one more time: mouse or grouse.



Yep, that'll do it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 23 Feb 13 - 12:35 AM

Oh, and while we're on the subject, and not to hijack Bill's thread - the new and current trend among young Americans, male and female, to employ the glottal stop instead of pronouncing the letter "t" in the middle of words.
Or Glo'al stop.
If you're not from Glasgow or London where you grew up using it, please stop.
BTW, isn't it weird that those who use the glottal stop can't pronounce their affliction? Like folks with a lisp.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 23 Feb 13 - 12:40 AM

Stim - misssed your post. I have no problem with the glottal stop when it's a regionalism, but the tendency among today's yoof to put it on to be trendy is grating to my aging ears.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Feb 13 - 03:18 AM

Ah, but 9, how do Canadians pronounce louse, spouse, grouse and mouse? :)

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Will Fly
Date: 23 Feb 13 - 07:02 AM

Well now - I'll solve the"ou" Canadian pronunciation mystery.

I was brought up as a boy in the area around the Lancashire (UK) town of Bolton. The way they pronounce a phrase like "brown trousers" is unique to that area - but almost exactly as Canadians also pronounce it.

The corollary of this argument is that all Canadians are descended from Boltonians - and, by the same token, I'm therefore an honorary Canadian. Hi folks!

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 23 Feb 13 - 07:27 AM

"Ah, but 9, how do Canadians pronounce louse, spouse, grouse and mouse? :)"

Same as house, Ebbie.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: gnu
Date: 23 Feb 13 - 08:18 AM

Stop grousing.

"... Canadians are descended from Boltonians - and, by the same token, I'm therefore an honorary Canadian. Hi folks!"

Welcome, fellow Bolthead. Some Canucks are boltholes, but we shant drift that far.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Feb 13 - 10:32 PM

Do Americans find it as hard to distinguish between, say Scots and Yorkshire as people back here do to tell someone is Canadian rather than from the USA?

.............

If it was just swallowed T, that would be tolerable. It's when it spreads to other consonants in the middle of words that it gets over the limit of comprehensibility. K, even G and P. Some people seem to dispense with consonants almost entirely.

I've sometimes sat on the train hearing a conversation, and speculated what strange foreign language it might be (the next but one station is Stansted Airport) and then the penny drops, it's English. And I still can't understand it. And these aren't immigrants.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: frogprince
Date: 24 Feb 13 - 02:21 PM

999, I'm just a tad surprised to hear that you've never heard any Canadians who do a little cleaning up aboot the hoose. I spent a year just above the Minnesota border in Ontario, and it was quite common there. I took it that there was quite a bit of Scottish ancestry in the locale, and thought that it might have hung on from that.

I'm kinda trying to play back a little of your own speech in my head, and not remembering much distinction from USAan midwestern. Probably at least some subtle stuff, but no enough to stick in mind.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 25 Feb 13 - 11:14 AM

Hey, frogprince.

I've heart it from imported Scots, but never from second or third generation Canadians. Course, I ain't heard everyone yet.

Take the sound of the el from shell. Put a t on that sound. That would nearly rhyme with the way we say out. In the following video, the kid nails us saying out and about at 1:01 and 1:02. I can't see how anyone gets oot and aboot from that.

Say hi to the boss for me. I hope things are good.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 25 Feb 13 - 11:18 AM

OK, so I forgot the link.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: bobad
Date: 25 Feb 13 - 11:18 AM

I want to see that video.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: bobad
Date: 25 Feb 13 - 11:25 AM

That's the way I hear it too but maybe our American friends hear differently. BTW he doesn't pronounce "bagel" (at least that's what I think he is saying) the way I do and hear.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: GUEST,999
Date: 25 Feb 13 - 11:36 AM

I stopped at out and about. Just listened to the bagel part. I think you and I would rhyme bagel with BAY-gull and he seems to be saying BEG-ull.

And you too say hi to the boss for me.

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Feb 13 - 12:59 PM

Isn't that a spacefaring dog with long ears - oh and Max has one too?

Subject: RE: BS: 'vocal fry'- my suspicions confirmed
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Feb 13 - 02:39 PM

Re: the "Canadian accent."

I live in Seattle and I've been to Vancouver, B. C. about forty-eleven times. And my sister Mary married a Canadian law student who went on to become a Provincial Judge in Ontario. They have visited here in Seattle a number of times and I once spent a couple of weeks with them in Kingston, Ontario.

SOME Canadians do the "oot, aboot, and around the hoose" thing, but not ALL. I can't pin it down as a regionalism because I've heard in both in Vancouver and in Kingston. My brother-in-law, the judge, does in on some words, and my sister, who has lived in Canada for a number of decades, has picked it up. On a FEW words.

But definitely not every Canadian I've met.

No big deal. I've heard even bigger variations in speech between people who live in the west coast of the U. S. and people I met in Kansas when Barbara and I visited her mother there.

=======

On the "vocal fry" thing:

I think I can speak with a certain authority on this issue. I've taken singing lessons from three different voice teachers over a period of several years, and they, of course, covered matters of tone production and speech. Plus, before I went into radio, I took a course in broadcasting, which included a section called "Broadcast English."

In Broadcast English, the idea was to eliminate regionalisms and odd-ball mannerisms in vocalization and pronunciation and teach the students to use "Standard American Speech." Something like "vocal fry" would have been thoroughly jumped on as a very bad speech habit in the Broadcast English course.

And all three of my singing teachers would have been horrified to find one of their vocal students falling into a speech habit like that, because that little "rasp" at the end of a word and/or sentence is quite hard on the vocal folds. If done over a period of time, it will eventually lead to chronic laryngitis—and much worse.

In the young, it's an attempt to sound "cool," and in others, it's an attempt at pseudo-sophistication. That's why some elderly dowager ladies have baritone speaking voices.

BAD!!

Don Firth