I started wondering about this after I watched a show in which they made fun of a girls laugh. It was truly hideous. But she seemed unable to control it. I started thinking about my own laugh and those of friends. I don’t recall any of them having a change in laugh style since I’ve known them.
So, are you born with your laugh style or is it learned? Can you change it down the road? I’m not talking about the ‘te-hee’ you might sometimes do, but the all-out laugh that you can’t control.
I think it’s pretty much set, although I can’t really scientifically back that up. Most of my friends have had the same laugh as long as I’ve known them. The one that has changed has done so do to smoking. His laugh(and voice) sounds really scratchy now. He also tends to hock crap up when he laughs. I don’t know if that’s true of all smokers, but it’s true for this one. So, as far as I can tell, you’re set with your particular laugh, but some external factors can affect it. Maybe somebody else can shed some more light on it. This is just my $0.02.
After years of being mocked for how I laugh, I changed it. Now it takes . . . so far more than I’ve run into to make me laugh the way I used to.
A laugh, like a voice, can be altered with some effort. Oft times, the two are inseparable. A person with an unpleasant laugh usually has an unpleasant voice that would be well served with training. This has been the voice of personal experience.
Tymp- Is that also the case for the belly-laugh? I know from personal experience that when I get going I have no control over how I laugh.
As I was biking around today, I noticed alot of kids with their parents, a couple of the kids were laughing and whatnot. What I’d never noticed before, until I started thinking about it, is that kids all sound alike. Kind of a cackle and giggle mixed together.
So I haven’t the faintest on if it’s learned or not and whether it’s changable.
::I think it’s time to get a new dat player for my bike rides. I’m thinking waaaay to much::
Absolutely, CnoteChris. You can adjust your voice by training the control of airflow and the contortions of your throat. If you train properly, you will develop a new natural pattern that your laugh has no choice but to follow.
Hmmm. I have a hard time believing that Tymp, but I have no reason not to believe it. I’ve never known anyone who’s changed their laugh after they got older. But, I’ve never known anyone who changed their voice either.