Couldn’t that be argued that you got that from genetics or you inherited it?
I mean I’ve been told that I sound like people that died long before I was born, so I doubt I learned anything from watching or hearing them.
You could say it, but I don’t think you could make a solid argument for it based on what we know about genetics.
No- you got it from your parents, who got it from them.
Isn’t that the main definition of genetics? My parents got it from their parents who got it from their parents who got it from their parents, that…
No. Genetics is … well, I’ll let Wikipedia do the work.
Genetics is the study of how traits are passed along through genes. Not how they’re passed down through families or cultural groups. That’s more like sociology.
No. Your behaviors may resemble those of your parents not just because you may have inherited them, but also because you learned them from them; or because you grew up in a similar environment to them.
I get that… but I thought things like that were passed down from parents to children.
Just like hair color, eye color, skin color were passed down, so were things like voice tones, the way we walk, things like that.
Just like identical twins sound exactly alike, just like they walk the same, etc. Isn’t that genetic then?
No. There are genetic elements to how you sound and how you walk (like the length of your leg or your vocal chords), but they’re not genetically determined. Not everything that is shared between family members is genetic. It’s a little bit like saying “People from my home town all have the same accent. Is that accent genetic?” The answer is no, of course not, because not all of those people are related closely enough to share anthing. It’s learned and passed down from one generation to another through different means. Genetics is the study of things that are inherited through genes.
I’m not talking about accent, that’s why I mentioned identical twins.
They sound exactly alike (I knew twin sisters in school and heard one and thought she was her sister) they’re technically the same person (all right, I know, not the ‘same’ person, but same egg same sperm, hence same person) and so they have the same genetic markings.
But I know the twins’ accent was because they were from up north, but not the tone of their voices.
The accent thing was an example. The point is that people can share a trait for reasons that don’t have anything to do with genes. There are genetic factors that affect how your voice sounds, but it’s not all genetic and not all identical twins are going to sound exactly alike. There’s no voice gene, and there’s no gene that controls how you walk.
I know accent was an example, I was just continuing the example. And in continuing it, and with the twin example, say two identical twins are separated at birth, one grows up in France one in Ireland.
They grow up, one of course will have a French accent, one will have an Irish accent. Exactly, that’s because of where they grew up, but wouldn’t they also sound the same if you take away the accent? Underneath the accent?
Just like most siblings ‘sound’ alike? (to me they seem to anyways).
Okay, no gene controls how you walk but they do with the shape and the size of your legs like you said, so in theory the way you walk could be genetic?
And here’s another question, why isn’t their a voice gene? Shouldn’t their be a gene that make the voice-box?
You would find some similarities. I don’t think you would find that they sound exactly the same.
No. There are genetic factors that affect the way you walk and speak, but the ways you walk or talk are not inherited.
Why would there be?
Of course there are genes that affect your larynx. But there are a bunch of factors that affect your voice, and not all of those are genetic.
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And here’s another question, why isn’t their a voice gene?
Why would there be?”
Why shouldn’t there be?
There’s a gene that makes you skin, that makes your neck, that makes your larynx, so why shouldn’t there be one that makes your voice.
Could/Do deaf-by-birth people sound like their parents? If they sound like their parents (or whomever raised them) how did they learn that? They apparently didn’t learn it by hearing the person.
It’s much more complicated than that.
Well, for starters you can’t take away the accent. Accent is pronunciation, and if you’re not pronouncing anything you’re not saying anything. If you mean the precise tonality behind their voice, then, no. You’re bound to have very similar timbre amongst twins, but the same is true for any family members. Sometimes one twin can sing and the other cannot. Sometimes one can roll their r’s, and the other cannot.
The vocal cords develop differently in everyone and are exercised in different ways. As twins grow older they may even start to look quite different, and they can have different fingerprints. Being an identical twin isn’t being a carbon copy.
Twins may even have absolutely different pinky holding out preferences.
Not to belabor the debate.
But, I’ve known people that had amazing similarities to a parent. Their gestures, the way they walked, and even their posture would remind you of the parent.
Its hard to accept that all that comes from the environment growing up.
I’ve watched close friends kids grow up and its like seeing a clone develop sometimes. I’ve also seen the reverse where the kid seemed nothing like either parent.
I did mean the precise tonality. Or even something like if both learn to speak with an ‘American accent’ wouldn’t they sound alike or almost exact?
But if they are identical they wouldn’t change too much from each other would they? Or would they?
*^ that may be going into nature vs. nurture, though.
No. Wasn’t this explained already? They’re likely to sound similar, but there is no guarantee they’ll sound alike.
They can.
That’s where this thread started. The pinky thing is nurture, not nature. There is no “stick out your pinky when you’re eating” gene. I’m not any kind of geneticist, but that is definitely a learned behavior.
Well, they do. Link.
A lot of the time, twins sound almost identical to each other when they grow up with the same accent, in the same environment etc (as you would expect) but then, so do brothers and sisters (especially if the age gap isn’t so significant). But also a lot of the time they don’t. If the traits truly were genetic (like, how many fingers you’re going to have, where your arms are placed) then they’d be consistent. But they’re not.