sounding black?

ok... Let's see if I can get this answered without it turning into a racial debate... but back in the OJ trial, I remember Johnny Cochoran calling it racist to say that someone "sounded black" and that you couldn't tell that someone was black just by their voice. I've thought about this from time to time when listening to someone I don't know on the radio... and I think you CAN tell. Maybe not all the time, but it seems that there is a distinctive speech pattern that makes me think "black person", or "white person".

Is there any linguistic evidence to support ethnic group speech patterns? I don't know much about this area (and isn't THAT obvious), but I've asked some people I know this question, and they all say that, yes... often they can tell if a person is black or white just by their voice. Before you jump down my throat, I've asked both black and white friends this and they've all basically said the same thing. However, my study wasn't very scientific. I wonder if there has been any real study done on this, or is it considered so politically incorrect to even think such a thing that no one will touch it?

Anyone care to share their thoughts and knowledge?

Thanks,

Chief Wiggum

Ebonics?

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YO-HO, ME HEARTIES! ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR THE MUSICAL BATTLE AT SEA!

[Nickrz]

I watched Johnny Cochran make that remark live during the trial and at the time thought it typical of the mealy-mouthed whoppers he foisted on the American public.

However, after some reflection, I came to the inescapable conclusion you cannot tell for sure if a person is black just by listening to his or her voice. And that's just what the man meant, and he's correct.

[Fretful Porpentine]

Yeah, there's such a thing as sounding black. It's definitely a way of talking rather than anything inherent about the voice, though. When my roommate talks on the phone, it's usually obvious whether she's talking to a white person (in which case there's no way to tell she's not white) or a black person. Also, she has different degrees of black speech: depending on how broad her accent is, I can tell whether she's talking to a black professor or to a member of her family.

Since this is something she can turn on and off at will, I think it would be possible for a white person with a little practice to fake "black speech." If I were Johnny Cochran, I would have stressed this point and laid off on the name-calling, but I guess that's too much to expect from the legal system these days.

[handy]

Sure people can learn other voices, some people actually get paid to do that.

Years back I remember a tiny DOS program called Jive. You would run a text file thru it and it would convert it to black-written slang. Kinda fun at the time.

[Diceman]

Well, Johnny Cochran should know about racism ;), but I'd say that yes, you can tell if someone is black or white by the sound of their voice. I'm not sure if there's any inherant tonal differences (nasal differences, perhaps?). It may just be differences in speech patterns. After all, I could tell that my neighbor was from the South by his accent.

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"I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms." -The Secret of Monkey Island

[Melatonin]

Does ANYONE remember Rick Astley?

[Markxxx]

Yes you can tell if certain people are black or white. But that doesn't mean if a person sounds black he/she couldn't disguise his voice to sound white or vice versa.

It is like handwriting experts will tell you it is impossible to tell if a handwriting sample is male or female but clearly random tests indicate an average person can distinguish with over 80% accuracy, if it was random it should be in the 50% range.

As for certainty it is near impossible to say with certainty that anything is always distinguishable.

[Satan]

You can sound black and not be black (lotsa white rappers and so-called "wiggers" fit this), and you can be black and not sound it... Whatever, I don't think it's racist to say this, but it can be inaccurate. Watch Rikki Lake sometime with your eyes closed and see if you can guess who is who...

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Yer pal,
Satan

[tomndebb]

It has already been mentioned, above, but I think that most people in the U.S. can identify whether most people that they hear (without seeing) are black or white. There are speech patterns (that are definitely learned--but that are present for all that) in everyone's speech. The word "honky" is usually ascribed to the idea that blacks considered the more nasal expression of white speakers to resemble geese honking. Conversely, black speakers are generally perceived to have throatier voices.

If there was not some truth in this perception, how could Eddy Murphy and Arsenio Hall pull off their "talking like a white man" shtick?

That being said, the idea that there is an inherent (not learned) quality of black people's speech that any "intelligent" white person can use to identify a black person 100% of the time is obvious bushwa. As noted above, it is possible for blacks to sound "white" and for whites to sound "black" (even when they are not attempting to mimic the other's speech paterns).

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Tom~

[labradorian]

As someone weaned on North American media culture, where a lot of black people on TV do, indeed, sound black, I was startled the first time I heard a fellow, visibly of African ethnic heritage, speaking with a pronounced Newfoundland accent.

[Diceman]

As someone weaned on North American media culture, where a lot of black people on TV do, indeed, sound black, I was startled the first time I heard a fellow, visibly of African ethnic heritage, speaking with a pronounced Newfoundland accent.

If you watch PBS (where alot of the programming is British in origen) you will, before too long, see a black person with an English accent. This was incredably strange the first time I heard it.

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"I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms." -The Secret of Monkey Island

[Dandmb50]

Curious topic and brings up something that I have always wondered about black people.

Does anyone know why many black people say "axed" instead of saying ask.

I have heard this often on US tv stations and always wondered why people say it.
Another common thing I hear from British people is "I have an idear" instead of saying idea. Where do they get the "R" from in the word "idea"?
I shall await the wisdom of the teeming millions. And yes I know us Candians say eh all the time and I'm not sure why....

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Please feel free to email me
Dandmb50@netscape.net

[heatherlee]

well I do agree with Satan on this one, today at work there was a girl I waited on that was white, but as soon as she opened her mouth she sounded black, just by the way she pronounced certain things. just goes to show you shoouldnt judge a book by its cover lol or sound I guess

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Love Always,
Heather Lee
XheatherleeX@aol.com

[Johanna]

"Does anyone know why many black people say "axed" instead of saying ask."

The pronunciation "ax" instead of "ask" is not of Ebonic origin but goes way back to certain dialects of Old English a thousand years ago that survived in regional dialects in England up modern times.

So if an English peasant says, "Let me ax you," that's not necessarily a reason to get frightened.

[White Wolf]

This is just MHO, but I think it's just an "accent." Remembering that African-Americans were brought as slaves from Africa, it may just be that particular accent; we (Americans) just don't recognize it as an accent because we all live in the same country. You can usually tell when someone is from the deep South, Texas, France, Italy, or New York, so why not Africa?

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White Wolf

"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense."

"Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them."

[elelle]

My area of work has been in ethnomusical research, mostly with Mississippi Delta blues musicians. There are many speech patterns that are particular to African-Americans here. An embarrassing tendency in visiting researcher/afficianadoes is to start to mimic, or maybe just absorb, local dialect, provoking a lot of merry BBQing (by the "research" subjects) afterwards.

I, in my naive days, learned that lesson well...On a tour of the West with some Delta musicians, driving the night shift in Texas, I missed an exit, and explaining it to the guys in the band, said, "Well, I guess we're just gonna have to turn it around...", but up-inflected the phrase at the end, in the black manner. Sam Carr, brilliant drummer and wag, caught it and said,"Well, I guess if I fucked up in the middle of nowhere, I'd wanna be black, too!"

Man, my face turned red, but we all laughed! You oughta hear how black people here in Mssppi imitate "white" accents! Hoo!

[Triskadecamus]

On the other hand, I have some evidence that the perception of racial accents is not exclusive to black people. A coworker asked me to place a call for her, to her sister, at her place of employment. I did so, and had no particular instructions, aside from a request that I ask for Miss Jackson. The phone rang, someone answered, I said, "Is Miss Jackson there?" The person answered "Yes." and I responded "May I speak with her, please."

Later I asked why my coworker had come all the way to my work area, rather than ask one of the people she worked directly with, to make the call, if she had simply wanted to keep someone from knowing who called. Her answer was that I "Sound white" and the boss would not suspect that I was a boyfriend, or family member.

<p align="center">Tris</p>

[Doug Bowe]

I worked with a Black DJ in a Country format.
He used the standard Midwest "Broadcast English" pronunciation. He thought it was amusing when bigots would call him up and confide that N****** were the cause of all problems. They obviously didn't know what he looked like. That's the beauty of radio.
So I'll have to vote for learned speech patterns.

[Lumpy]

My father was a poor southern white from the Georgia/South Carolina border. My mom tells me that in the pre-civil rights era, he had to go in person when looking for work, because from his voice alone people presumed he was black.

[KJ]

It is sometimes possible to tell what someone sounds like just by their voice...in the X-files (or maybe it was some other show...I think it was X-files), there is a white guy who's voice is dubbed over by someone who is obviously black. Don't ask me for an explanation, but sometimes you can just tell.

[KJ]

OOOPS!


"It is sometimes possible to tell what someone sounds like just by their voice..."


Well, DUH. It's ALWAYS possible to tell what they SOUND like. Oops.
X.X

[threemae]

Personally, I have always considered African-Americans, even if they had grown up in an environment with a normal "American" accent, to generally have a deeper voice, but not always.

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You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.

--Lyndon B. Johnson

White Wolf, I really don't think "talking black" can have anything to do with African origin--for one thing, not all black Americans are of African origin; for another, many of those who are have been here for 100 or 200 years. My family came from Eastern Europe only 100 years ago--and I certainly don't have any speech-related patterns from that area.

I wonder if it doesn't have anything to do with class and education? We've all heard black people who "talk white," and they tend to be well educated. So I wonder if "black talk" isn't really just "poor, uneducated black talk?" Much as poor whites have their own distinctive speech patterns.

[pldennison]

I wonder if it doesn't have anything to do with class and education? We've all heard black people who "talk white," and they tend to be well educated. So I wonder if "black talk" isn't really just "poor, uneducated black talk?" Much as poor whites have their own distinctive speech patterns.

Actually, it does have some roots in African phonemes and grammar patterns. Linguists have found that the rules of "black speech" or Ebonics or AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) or whatever you prefer to call are applied pretty consistently by children and adults no matter where in the country you look. I would imagine that blacks of non-African origin tend to pick it up as children simply because blacks tend to live in the same (often segregated) areas.

Anyway, IIRC, it doesn't correlate particularly highly with poverty or with education. It probably occurs more regionally than anything. And many blacks can turn it on and off at will.


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"I love God! He's so deliciously evil!" - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy

[occ]

I agree that you can often speculate on someone's race by the sound of their voice. Note that I am not referring to someone's conversational style or anything like that, but to the sound only. I don't know why this would be considered racist; why wouldn't people with different ethnic heritage have slightly different vocal-chord structure?

[Timothy Campbell]

This next item may appear to be off-topic, but I think it ties into the larger idea of the OP, which is that you can tell something about somebody's background when the precise facts aren't available. (The worry, of course, being that you could pre-judge somebody.)

Anyway, here in Quebec, people acquire an ability to decide if somebody is French or English just by looking at them. This skill is especially important to store personnel, who need to know what language to use to address the client. (Some French people get very miffed if they are addressed in the "wrong" language.)

I noticed this skill (which nearly everybody in Quebec has but nobody comments upon) and started wondering what we were looking for. I finally decided that there are subtle cues based on modes of dress, hair-style (including style of mustache, in men), and (controversial though this may sound) facial bone structure. (The original French settlement had a smallish gene pool.)

Is the skill 100% accurate? No, but it's pretty darn good. I am almost never addressed in French when I'm in a bilingual neighbourhood, so I must look English.

I believe you could say that this is the linguistic equivalent of "gay-dar".

In other words (to get back to the OP), I think that you can tell a lot about a person by picking up on subtle cues. We are, however, generally not aware of which cues we use.

Dandmb50: You said: "yes I know us Canadians say eh all the time and I'm not sure why...." The reason, I believe, is that English Canadians inherited the habit from French Canadians who use the word "hien", which means "Is that not so?"

[tomndebb]

Flora, of course, first you have to define which of the many black dialects you are referring to when you discuss "talking black."

(I'm not sure what you meant about not all blacks having an African origin. An immigrant from Jamaica, Barbados, or Trinidad will probably speak with an accent modified by the Queen's English, but they would still have many of the African speech patterns that were brought over when their ancestors were enslaved on those islands--having been imported from Africa.)

The throatier and less nasal voice that blacks use regardless of (most) accents very likely does come from the African speech patterns that they brought from home and handed to their children. In the same way, Asians with accents tend to sound even more nasal than Europeans because those are the tones that their languages emphasize.

Europeans (and, later, Asians) made a concerted effort after the 1880's or 1890's to assimilate. Prior to that, many immigrant cultures actually maintained their original tongues. My family still has stories of the time in the 1890's when one of my ancestral matriarchs announced one day that the family would henceforth speak English (after speaking German within their American households for around fifty years). The assimilation process was hastened by government and educational authorities who set up special programs from the 1890's through the 1920's (when we barred the door to immigrants) to encourage everyone to join in the "melting pot" and become Americans.

Blacks never had that opportunity to assimilate until rather recently. Even when they left the share-crop farms of the South and moved to the industrial North, they were isolated in ghettoes and no special efforts were extended to them to be like "the rest of us." Language patterns that had developed among them during the slave period continued after it because the communities were not integrating with the white community and there was no pressure to "sound like" their separated neighbors. It was probably a good tactic during the periods of slavery, and then Jim Crow, to have a language that was based on American English but was sufficiently different to prevent the local slave-holders or their successors from listening in on any conversations.


(On the west coast, some aspects of ghetto attitudes had an impact on Asian immigrants right up until WWII, after which they were allowed access to the mainstream and baby boomer third and fourth generation Asian-Americans are the first to consistently speak "without an accent"; the same can be found among the Irish and the Jews of the East coast, where third and fourth generation immigrants had culturally noticeable accents until around WWII.

You mentioned an Eastern European background; Polish is a strong immigrant population in Metro Detroit. In metropolitan Detroit, there are many people whose speech is influenced by their Polish forebears. It is stronger in Wyandotte or Warren than in Sterling Heights, (or the pure Kentuckian of Hazel Park or Ypsilanti), but an attentive ear can still pick up those strains. And the fact that you hear less Polish-American in Rochester Hills is a result of the mixing of the German, Irish, Italian, and Polish, accents with the accent of the original New Yorkers who settled there and with the people who came from all over the U.S. and Canada for Henry Ford's $5.00/day wage.

I went to school with a number of guys whose speech reflected Polish or Italian backgrounds, but who were all born in the 1950's and whose grandparents all immigrated in the 1890's or 1900's. Their kids, by and large, have only a SouthEast Michigan accent, but it has taken 100 years to get there for many families.

Confined to specific areas until the early 1970's, the black population of Metro Detroit has not had the fifty years of mixing that the Poles and Italians have had.

Blacks who have tried (through scholarship or the entertainment industry) to leave the ghettoes behind, often have tried to assimilate, and have modified their speech patterns to sound more like the majority. That has gone on throughout this century, but has become more frequent with the collapse of Jim Crow and his Northern cousins, redlining, etc.

Is Black Non-Standard English (or Ebonics) generally a sign of lower education levels? It probably is a decent indicator. Although there are many educated blacks, today, who probably still maintain their accent for the same cultural reasons that third generation European immigrants often try to go back and capture the original language (after the second and third generations rejected it in favor of Americanization).

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Tom~

[handy]

www.jiveon.com (http://www.jiveon.com) has a Jive translator, phrases, etc. Fun, here is one for letter 'a':

"Fuckin' A, brother!! The Jive Page be
the shit and then some on the receipt!"

[elelle]

I have two other points to add to Tom's elucidating post.

In Mississippi, there is a certain way of talking low and fast, that is pretty hard for outsiders to understand...and difficult for white locals, too. The same speaker can then turn around and speak in a more intelligible (to whites) manner. This helps to fly under the dominant cultural radar. New Orleans and Jamaica have, in addition to African speech patterns in English, French and Spanish added to the patois. But a more "proper" English is also used when necessary.

Rap music, as well as blues, uses this codification in a creative way. In the case of blues,"a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a seafood store" is saying something you still can't say on the radio, but that flies right over the heads of most people who would get upset. Besides raunchy double entendres, plenty was said about the dismal treatment of Black Americans, in a way that had Mr. Charlie begging to hear more. ( Mr. Charlie shut up the talking African drums pretty quick, though). Rap continues this, with incredible manipulation of English to address terrible inequity and pain, in the truest sense of spoken poetry.

In this light, I think white culture is about 30 years behind in evolving the living language.

The other point is that media now allows everyone to have access to a more homogenous way of speaking from birth. This is a pretty recent development, and I expect it will allow more people to be "bi-modal" in their use of English.

WELL, HERE IS THIS THREAD IN JIVE!

Chief Wiggum
Member posted 10-24-1999 07:39 AM
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ok. Ya' know?.. Let's see if ah' can dig dis answered widout it turnin' into some racial debate... but back in de OJ trial, ah' rememba' Johnny Cocho'an callin' it racist t'say dat some sucka "sounded brother" and dat ya' couldn't tell dat some sucka wuz brother plum by deir voice. I've dought about dis fum time t'time when listenin' t'some sucka ah' duzn't know on de transista'... and ah' dink ya' CAN tell. Maybe not all de time, but it seems dat dere be a distinctive speech pattern dat makes me dink "black sucka'", o' "honky sucka'".
Is dere any lin'uistic evidence t'suppo't ednic group speech patterns? ah' duzn't know much about dis area (and ain't THAT obvious), but I've ax'ed some sucka's ah' know dis quesshun, and dey all say dat, yeah man... often dey kin tell if some sucka' be black o' honky plum by deir voice. Befo'e ya' jump waaay down mah' droat, I've ax'ed bod brother and honky homeys dis and dey've all basically said da damn same doodad. However, mah' study wuzn't real scientific. Co' got d' beat! ah' wonda' if dere gots been any real study done on dis, o' be it considered so's politically inco'rect t'even dink such some din' dat no one gots'ta touch it?

Any sucka care t'share deir doughts and knowledge?

Danks,

Chief Wiggum



daniel p bostaph
Member posted 10-24-1999 07:44 AM
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Ebonics?
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YO-HO, ME HEARTIES! Right on! ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR THE MUSICAL BATTLE AT SEA! Right on!



Nickrz
Moderato' posted 10-24-1999 08:29 AM
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I watched Johnny Cochran make dat remark live durin' de trial and at da damn time dought it typical uh de mealy-mouded whoppuh's he foisted on de American public. Co' got d' beat!
However, afta' some reflecshun, ah' came t'de inescapable conclusion ya' kinnot tell fo' sho' man if some sucka' be black plum by listenin' t'his o' ha' voice. And dat's plum whut de joker meant, and he's co'rect. Man!


Fretful Po'pentine
Member posted 10-24-1999 10:05 AM
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Yeah, dere's such some din' as soundin' brother. It's definitely some way uh rappin' rada' dan nuthin inherent about da damn voice, dough. Lop some boogie. When mah' roommate raps on de phone, it's usually obvious wheda' she's rapin' t'a honky sucka' (in which case dere's no way t'tell she's not honky) o' some black sucka'. Also, she gots different degrees uh black speech, dig dis: dependin' on how broad ha' accent is, ah' can tell wheda' she's rapin' t'a brother super honcho o' t'a memba' of ha' family. Slap mah fro!
Since dis be sump'n she kin turn on and off at will, ah' dink it would be possible fo' some honky sucka' wid some little practice t'fake "black speech. Lop some boogie." If ah' were Johnny Cochran, ah' would gots stressed dis point and laid off on de dojigger-callin', but ah' guess dat's too much t''spect fum de legal system dese days.


handy
Member posted 10-24-1999 11:23 AM
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Sho' man sucka's kin learn oda' voices, some sucka's actually dig paid t'do dat. Man!
Years back ah' rememba' a tiny DOS honky code called JIBE. You's would run some text stash dru it and it would convert it t'black-written slang. What it is, Mama! Kinda fun at da damn time.


Diceman
Member posted 10-24-1999 11:38 AM
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Well, Johnny Cochran should know about racism , but I'd say dat yeah dude, ya' kin tell if some sucka be black o' honky by de sound uh deir voice. I'm not sho' man if dere's any inherant tonal differences (nasal differences, puh'haps?). It may plum be differences in speech patterns. Afta' all, ah' could tell dat mah' neighbo' wuz fum de Soud by his accent. Man!
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"I had some feelin' dat in Hell dere would be mushrooms." -De Secret uh Monkey Island



Doug Bowe
Member posted 10-24-1999 12:24 PM
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I wo'ked wid some Black DJ in some Country fo'mat. Man!
He used da damn standard Midwest "Broadcast English" pronunciashun. He dought it wuz amusin' when bigotss would call him down and confide dat N****** wuz de cause uh all problems. Dey obviously dun didn't know whut he looked likes. Dat's de beauty uh transista'.
So's I'll gots'ta vote fo' learned speech patterns.

Lumpy
Member posted 10-24-1999 12:32 PM
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Mah' Big Daddy wuz some poo' soudern honky fum de Geo'gia/Soud Carolina bo'der. Ah be baaad... Mah' mom tells me dat in de pre-civil rights era, he had t'go in sucka' when lookin' fo' wo'k, cuz' from his voice alone sucka's presumed he wuz brother.


KJ
Member posted 10-24-1999 12:33 PM
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It be sometimes possible t'tell whut some sucka sounds likes plum by deir voice...in de X-stashs (o' maybe it wuz some oda' show, so cut me some slack, Jack...I dink it wuz X-stashs), dere be a honky dude who's voice be dubbed upside by some sucka who be obviously brother. Duzn't ax' me fo' an 'esplanashun, but sometimes ya' kin plum tell.

KJ
Member posted 10-24-1999 12:36 PM
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OOOPS! Right on!


"It be sometimes possible t'tell whut some sucka sounds likes plum by deir voice..."


Well, DUH. It's ALWAYS possible t'tell whut dey SOUND likes. Oops.
X.X

dreemae
Member posted 10-24-1999 12:40 PM
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Sucka'ally, ah' have always considered African-Americans, even if dey had grown down in an environment wid some no'mal "American" accent, t'generally gots some deepuh' voice, but not always.
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You's know, hangin' whut be right be easy. Slap mah fro! De problem be knowin' whut be right. Man!

--Lyndon B. Johnson


Melatonin
Member posted 10-24-1999 02:52 PM
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Duz ANYONE rememba' Rick Astley?

Markxxx
Member posted 10-24-1999 02:56 PM
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Yeah dude ya' kin tell if certain sucka's is black o' honky. But dat duzn't mean if some sucka' sounds brother he/she couldn't disguise his voice t'sound honky o' vice versa. WORD!
It be likes handwritin' 'espuh'ts gots'ta tell ya' it be impossible t'tell if some handwritin' sample be male o' dudette but clearly random tests indicate an average sucka' kin distin'uish wid upside 80% accuracy, if it wuz random it should be in de 50% range.

As fo' certainty it be near impossible t'say wid certainty dat nuthin be always distin'uishable.


Satan
Member posted 10-24-1999 04:40 PM
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You's kin sound brother and not be brother (lotsa honky rappuh's and so-called "wiggers" fit dis), and ya' kin be brother and not sound it. Man!.. Whutever, ah' duzn't dink it's racist t'say dis, but it kin be inaccurate. Watch Rikki Lake sometime wid yo' eyes closed and see if ya' kin guess who be who. 'S coo', bro...
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Ya' pal,
Satan



tomndebb
Member posted 10-24-1999 07:39

[Boris B]

Satan, that's awesome! Never thought I'd be saying something good about such a long post. Anyway, it looks like the translator is temporarily busted, so I can't translate passages of the U.S. Constitution into jive like I want.

Here's an off-the-cuff version:

De man shall make now law givin props to an establishment of religions, nor stingin on a homie's right to the free exercise thereof....

A down, fly posse, being needit for the security of a free hood, the right of all the cats* to pack nines, AKs, and other pieces, shall not dissed.

* Since the enfranchisment of women, this has been interpreted to also include bitches and hos.

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Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
- Boris Badenov

[elelle]

Satan/Legba---- you one bad muddafurya!!!!!!

[ruadh]

If you watch PBS (where alot of the programming is British in origen) you will, before too long, see a black person with an English accent. This was incredably strange the first time I heard it.

I've lived in England and I can vouch for the fact that even there - where black people do NOT speak ebonics - it is still often possible to tell that someone is black just from his/her voice. I've never analyzed why, though.

Thanks everyone for the great replies... a question that I also had was the ask = ax phenomenon, but I've heard a white person use that too (from rural Virginia) so I figured it was some sort of a dialect, or lazy speech... but it is definitely something I've noticed that black people say from many parts of the country... so that part of the discussion was interesting.

Another speech "quark" I've noticed is the changing of "th" to "ff", so "both" turns into "boff". The weird thing about this is that I have never heard a white person speak like this (although perhaps it's the same as ax... it's just a matter of where you grow up). I knew a black woman named Ruth who called herself "Roof". I just thought that was the weirdest thing... I wondered if she ever got offended that I called her Ruth, even though she NEVER pronounced it that way...

I do agree that this isn't a 100% test, and that you can't always tell black/white by hearing a voice, but I think the analogy with handwriting is an accurate one. I think that all of us make up our minds as to the sex of a writer by their handwriting, and almost always it turns out that we are right. Can someone fake it? Sure... but after reading the responses my bet is that most of us cue in on SOMETHING in speech... whatever it is, that makes us decide "black" or "white".

Satan's ebonic posting aside... I just can't believe someone hasn't really studied this.

Slap mah 'fro!