Pleasant, even. I don’t get the fuss.
Overall, the voice seems fake to me. I’ve been able to identify certain aspects, but the whole of the irksomeness is greater than the parts. There must be some person or voice from my past that is unpleasantly evoked for it to irritate me this much. I just finished listening to Weekend Edition and so this is on my mind. Here are some of the mannerisms that I find grating:
-Curley-Q flourishes at the end of many words and sentences, Shirley Temple style.
-Over-articulated t’s, not at the beginning of words but in the middle (e.g. “little”), which sounds and is natural for Brits, but not most Americans.
-Elocution class pronunciation of short a. You know it when you hear it. Nothing wrong with voice class, but this sounds affected.
-Oh so special pronunciation of long o in words like “poetry” and so many more. Again, you will know what I mean when you hear it.
-Overly mellow throatiness of voice tone. I just don’t buy it.
You want an annoying voice mannerism?
Click on this link and listen during the morning* (Eastern US Time). Wait until they do the station identification. Whoever does it has the most robotic pronunciation of any human that isn’t Stephen Hawking.
“This is Double-You Cee Cue Ess” with a highly overpronounced “W” and an intonation that’ll make you seasick if you’re not careful. I honestly thought it was a computer-generated voice for a long time until I heard the announcer mention that day’s sponsors in a normal voice and then switch to robot voice for the call letters.
*I’ve heard it other times of day, but it’s most common (and more annoying) in the mornings.
You guys must know things, or have the ability to distinguish tihngs, that aren’t even in my conceptual scheme. The only one of the above that I’d even know how to tell if you were giving an accurate description or not is the “over-articulated t’s.” For all the rest, I don’t even know what it would mean for you to be right or wrong.
As for the t’s, the clip I posted above seems to have no t’s in the right place for me to make the evaluation, so I’m still not able to see what you guys are saying.
I am beginning to be able to tolerate Eleanore Beardsley (no idea how to spell her name)…after I heard her piece on dog poop in Paris, and heard her speak French, I realized that her monotonic intonation was an English thing, and she could actually sound excited, just not in English.
I want to scream whenever I hear the other 2. Jackie Lyden has no sense of timing, and on interviews she seems to lack the ability to respond to the interviewee’s response…ie. sounds totally canned and like she is reading questions. No reciprocation!
I never heard of Windsor Johnston before I started hearing her on NPR…AAAAGGGGHHH!!! DON’T DELIVER NEWS OF TRAGEDY AND CATASTOPHES IN A PERKY, SMILING VOICE!!! Have some reverence, for chrissakes!!!
I myself have an annoying voice, so I totally sympathize with these people…BUT I DON’T SUBJECT MILLIONS TO MY GOOFY VOICE! I respect the hard work they must have all done to get to where they are today, but come on…the radio??? Really???
I had only wanted to write a message to the world to say how I hated hated hated Jacki Lydon, when I happily stumbled on this web site. I have been an inveterate radio listener since childhood, and I adore wonderful voices (Garrison Keillor, Bill McGloughlin) and am about to jump out of my skin with annoyance at Diane Rheme. Then I went through all the posts for this web site and was laughing so hard that I lost my anger. Now I’m grateful for all these wonderful NPR listeners who wrote such delightful, intelligent posts. I had thought that I was the ONLY neurotic one who flew through the roof at terrible voices. Now I feel that I have company in my misery
But why, oh why, did nobody mention the worst voice of all: That half-dead, stupid dweeb who for the last twenty years has done the advertising. “Aheen,” he says, instead of, “On.” "Aheeat,“he says instead of, “At.” Well, surely you know what I mean. No spelling can reproduce that man’s awful voice.” And that non-sensical, “Support for NPR comes from NPR.” Well, duh.