I’m African American and 95 per cent of the time I can tell simply by voice if someone is Black just by hearing them speak whether it is a man, woman, boy or girl.
It is just something very distinct in the voice and it doesn’t matter if the person is using slang or talking proper. Is it true do we really have what I heard someone describe as a black accent…although to me I wouldn’t really describe it as an accent because that seems like and understatement.
What would you say?
I dunno. If you are saying that Blacks have different vocal frequencies, try listening to some Black people in Britain and see if you can tell the difference between their speech and Whites. I doubt you could.
If you’re talking about an accent, then it’s true to the extent that Blacks adhere to the accent. As an African-American yourself, you may be more atuned to the nuances of the accent than Whites would be.
easy to tell
I’d guess 80% of the time I can tell if a speaker is black, and it doesn’t matter if they are from the North or the South. On the whole, the higher the person’s socio-economic level, the harder it is to tell.
Often times, yes. Especially if it is a male. The voice tends to be deeper and more monotone.
I can’t always tell. I never think about it, actually. The few times that it really stands out to me one way or the other, I end up being wrong, so I don’t really bother. Just doesn’t seem important to me to know what the ethnic background of the person I’m listening to is.
Not really related, and I don’t want to hijack, but I can often tell with fairly good accuracy from watching people, looking at them or talking to them for a few minutes if people have ADD, are Jewish, and/or are/were stoners. (I have been all three of those things at different times of my life, so that probably has a lot to do with it.)
Actually, I frequently can.
On one of the linguistics lists I read someone mentioned a study done at the University of San Francisco several years ago in which people were asked to identify the race of speakers by the sound of their voices. The black speakers chosen all spoke Standard American English, not AAVE (“Ebonics”) - and still there were very high rates of identification. I can’t find a more precise cite for the study unfortunately.
Here’s a case involving this very issue.
In short, a black guy phones for an apartment. No call back. White guy phones, and gets it.
Johnson is suing the landlord for “linguistic profiling,” a form of racial discrimination the courts have yet to fully recognize. His case will be set for trial early in the new year
*But there is new research, already used in court, that suggests it’s easy for person to use voice to identify race. *
In two separate studies, Stanford University linguistics professor John Baugh showed that most Americans can identify race with incredible accuracy — sometimes with help of only a single word, a word most Americans use every day
“We presented that single word to over 300 students at a university on the East Coast,” Baugh says. “And there were over 80 percent positive ethnic identifications based on the single word.”
And what was that single word? “Hello.”
Must be an American thing. As someone already mentioned, I don’t think you could tell the difference in speech between a British Black person or a white person.
A black guy from East London or Liverpool is going to sound just like the white punter he’s sitting next to at the bar. Just listen to Craig Charles in Red Dwarf or watch an episode of Eastenders.
Sure- but only MOST of the time. Some white dudes who are “ghetto” sound awfully “black” to me, and some dudes with dark skins don’t sound “black” at all.
This could be mainly an American thing, as Jack points out.
Well, I have white friends who are African-American, and black friends who are neither African nor American, so I’d say, no, you cannot tell someone’s ancestry and current legal citizenship from their voice.
Generally, I can. There are exceptions but I estimate 90% of the time I can tell by the voice. Only for Americans, black Brits are indistinguishable to me from white Brits.
Jack Sarang and DrDeth, please see my post above. It is not “just an American thing”.
Unless maybe I’m psychic :rolleyes:
Not really. Here’s a true story.
A few years ago an advertiser here in St. Louis decided to get some national voice talent for a series of commercials. They found an African-American actor known for his voice-over work and, rather than fly him in, or the agency staff out, arranged for a satellite hookup for him to record his parts.
Everything went fine until one take. The agency producer, who had never met the actor, asked him to re-do one sentence because he “almost sounded black for a minute.” There were rumors that the west coast crew saw the actor get extremely angry, but he finished the taping, left without a word, and refused to work for the client again.
I had a friend in law school who was a blind Black guy (I’m White; this will be relevant later in the story).
He, my friend Miguel, and I all went to the bookstore to pick up some supplies onece, and in the store Miguel (incorrigible joker) said to him, “Wow, man, I wonder if anyone wonders what the Mexican guy is doing looking at the law books with the two Black guys! You did know pravnik was Black, right?” He laughed and said “Oh, yeah, I could tell from that thick urban accent he has!”
I had two experiences in my childhhood that provided revelation. The first was seeing a black fellow talking on TV who sounded just like a white guy. The second was hearing a white kid in an urban neighborhood who sounded just like black kids. So I learned that the sound of people’s speech comes from what they hear.
Here in the U.S., there is a large degree of separation between black communities and white communities, so most people grow up hearing speech that correlates to those ethnic groups. One can often tell whether a speaker is white or black, but it’s certainly not foolproof.
I think I do often notice a certain timbre that makes me believe the person on the other end of the phone is black but then again, it’s not like I ask them to confirm it. I’m just assuming. But there are enough people who are black who I see in person who seem to have that timbre that I think I am correct in my assumption most of the time. Not all, but most. I find a lot of black men in particular have very rich, deep, almost “round” voices. They are very pleasing to the ear. It’s not the words they use and I’m not talking about any certain manner of speaking, nor do I mean they use certain words that are associated with any kind of “black” (whatever that means) culture. It’s just the sound of their voices.
That’s interesting about whether the difference would be noticeable between a white person and a black one if they both had English accents, because now that I think about it, I don’t think I’d be able to tell between the two. I don’t know why - the timbre must still be there - does the accent overshadow it somehow?
I can usually tell but I’m from the South and most of my friends are southern. I think the Southern Arfican American dialect is very distinctive.
I’ve got a Nat King Cole boxset (Nat King Cole rules!:)) and on it is an outtake which ends with him talking about ordering a pizza for the musicians. To me, Nat’s singing sounds very “white” but when he talks, he sounds “black”. It’s a very odd disconnect.
My experiences are much like GaryT’s – I can often tell, but there is no foolproof way to be 100% sure every time. I suspect most Americans would say the same.
I worked as a telephone interviewer giving surveys as a part time job. Because of this I talked to a lot of people, and while I would never see them, because of questions about demographics I would usually find out their race/ethnicity (and the question was usually towards the front of the survey so I hadn’t asked them many questions). I could usually predict with about 90-95% accuracy (non-scientific, as I didn’t keep track) whether or not the person I was talking to would identify themselves as Black/African-American.
Of course, you can’t always tell a person’s race by the way their voice sounds. I submit the example of the “articulate athlete.” Any time a sports writer refers to someone being articulate it seems pretty likely that the athlete is black, but doesn’t sound like a rapper. I agree with others that this is a U.S. phenomenon (or maybe that’s just what notice from personal experience), but listen to someone like Tim Duncan, the center for the San Antonio Spurs. He’s black, graduated from Wake Forest, doesn’t really “sound black” to my ear, but he’s also from the Virgin Islands. Then looking at David Robinson, former Spurs center, officer from the Naval Academy, doesn’t talk like Snoop, but I would probably still be able to identify his voice as being African-American. It’s like the voice/accent is deeper or something.