There is a stereotypically effeminate manner of speaking the English language that many people associate with homosexual men. For prime examples, see Harvey Fierstein, or Fred Schneider (of the B-52’s).
Do these sorts of mannerisms also occur among native speakers of other languages? German, Swedish, Russian, Japanese, Swahili, whatever?
Japanese, at least, has specific vocabulary for women, specific forms of verbs and pronouns, though I know this only from research, not observations.
Many Indo-European languages have masculine and feminine forms for adjectives and nouns, but I assume that’s not quite what you mean.
Yeah not what I meant. I’m thinking of more of intonation rather than word choice.
A better alternative to Harvey Fierstein would be the ficticious character Jack Tors featured on the Jerky Boys series of albums. Here’s a sample.
Japanese definitely has masculine and feminine forms of speech, and this is not limited to word choice but includes tone as well. The traditionally ladylike manner of speaking is high pitched and seems really “cutesy” to Westerners. When I was in Japan I didn’t encounter this in normal conversation, but some women who work in customer service do talk that way.
I didn’t know any out gay men in Japan, in part because there aren’t many out gay men in Japan, so I couldn’t tell you how they speak. I did go to a cabaret in Tokyo where they did a bit with a drag queen who was talking like a very feminine TV presenter but would occasionally switch to a much deeper, masculine way of speaking for comedic effect.
I was told that it’s fairly common on Japanese TV to have “man on the street” spots where they find foreigners and ask them to speak Japanese, and that since a lot of Western guys are picking up Japanese from Japanese girlfriends this sometimes results in the guy speaking Japanese in what’s considered an amusingly feminine manner. I think that is more word choice than tone, though.
I remember my mother telling an Italian joke about a gay poodle that relied on stereotypically effeminate barking/speech mannerisms for the punchline. (I can’t remember the actual joke - I think it was pretty terrible and I’ve blanked it out.)
“Real” Spanish?