Now, don’t get all Cecil on me (ie. getting all PC and saying the question is unfair, etc.), because I’ve wondered this for years.
Black people’s voices have a definite “blackness” to them - I’m referring specifically to the timbre or sound, before grammar, inflection, diction, etc. even come into play. This rules out the sociocultural answers (“blacks are more likely to use slang,” or “blacks tend to be more relaxed with language”, etc.) that are often given.
So, what’s the deal? Even the “whitest” sounding blacks - those doing professional voiceover or radio work, where super-strict diction and inflection is enforced, still “sound black.”
But I can’t put my finger on what element of the voice provides this “blackness.”
Rebuttal: American academian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., American author Lawrence Otis Graham, British comedian Lenny Henry, British singer Shirley Bassey, American journalist Bryant Gumbel and British actress Thandie Newton.
None of their normal speaking voices have the particularly strong ethnic sound associated with “blackness.”
This specific cross section would also suggest a strong national/socioeconomic correlation between ethnic self-identification and “sounding” black.
I was just discussing this earlier today. What came out of the discussion was that this holds for a high percentage, but there is a very distinct minority where you cannot tell. It seems black voices tend to have a certain deeper resonance.
However, try listening to black Englishmen. I, at least for the several I have met, would not be able to tell they are black without seeing them. So, it may have something to do with American black culture, or it may be that I cannot tell the difference because the English accent itself is so different that I cannot distinguish any other subtle differences. This would be similar to someone who speaks English as a second language (even if the speak very well) being generally unable to notice differences between the accents in different parts if the US that would be glaringly obvious to a native.
In my experience, it’s all cultural. I used to work with three guys, all executives, who took immense pleasure in meeting in person the people they’d been having teleconferences with for years because invariably those people had no idea they were black.
There’s no physiological difference. It’s all cultural. Some people take great pains to make their voice that of the American newscaster – nice, neutral accent. Some try and don’t quite get there. Some don’t care.
It’s all in the pronunciation of the words. Freejooky, when you claim that:
> I’m referring specifically to the timbre or sound, before grammar, inflection,
> diction, etc. even come into play.
you’re incorrect. It is the “. . . inflection, diction . . .” (I assume that by these terms you mean the pronunciation. It’s not the “timbre or sound.” There’s nothing inborn in American blacks which causes them to have a different “timbre or sound.” I’m not even sure what that could be. Vocal frequency? What you’re hearing is a slightly different pronunciation of words, mostly a difference in the pronunciation of vowels. Being able to pick out and correctly describe the differences in pronunciation is a harder job than one might expect. Without some professional training in this, one could be easily fooled into thinking that someone’s pronunciations were genetically caused when it was simply a matter of them having learned a different pronunciation.
Not all American blacks have this accent, though. I would estimate that something like 75% of American blacks have an accent that sounds distinctively black. The rest have accents that are indistinguishable from whites from their region of the country. Most American blacks spend most of their time with other American blacks. Nor are they influenced much by white America even in their contacts with the media. A lot of the music they listen to is by other American blacks. Likewise, the TV they watch has a lot of American blacks on it. (TV surveys show that the top 10 TV shows watched by American blacks is quite different from the top 10 watched by white Americans.)
“Black people’s voices have a definite “blackness” to them”
I call bullshit.
I dare you to equate a Kentucky accent with an east LA accent or for that matter an Appalacian.
Bullshit, bullshit bullshit.
Here in Hawaii we have “blacks” One of my best customers is From the Dominican Republic. He sounds about as hispanic as anyone I have ever met. Blacker than the ace of spades.
Another customer of mine is from Kentucky, African American to be sure, Talks like an educated lawyer, with a southern accent, which, supprisingly enough he is.
Another one, a secretary, works for the Feds sounds, well on the phone she sounds as white as the driven snow. (mainland accent) Sweet lady by the way. You guessed it, so dark she’s almost purple.
If you were to Talk to me on the phone you would swear I was Native Hawaiian, I was, after all raised here, but I am Kamaaina. My wife on the other hand is 50% native blooded, she was raised in New York. Who do think sounds more “local”?
Each person has a pitch range they can speak in. There are optimal ranges for comfort, volume and the like. Where you set your voice and how you change the pitch are learnt part of the linguistic groups you interact with.
Listen to individuals you would consider black from different cultures, especially ones with different languages. You will hear that there is no inherent unifying “blackness” to the voices.
We-ee-eell – maybe not inherent unifying blackness – you don’t just pop out the womb knowing how to say, “peace, my brother,” “pass the hot sauce” and “muthafucka” credibly, you definitely have to learn that – but there are certain learned inflections, slang, expressions, obscenities that are amazingly cross-cultural, esp. when you consider the increasing global influence (permeance?) of American hip-hop culture. Back in school I was shocked at the similarities in English-speaking among the Ghanians, Dominicans, Toronto natives and South Africans who went to my university. Shoot, my Panamanian roommate tipped me off to Outkast and I was FROM Atlanta.
I guess my point is that it IS learned behavior, part of socialization, imprinting and cultural reinforcement. Conversely, you can take pains to not “sound black”… the author, Lawrence Otis Graham, whom I cited in an earlier post, writes in his book OUR KIND OF PEOPLE about the steps certain elitist, wealthy, light-skinned American blacks take to ethnically divorce themselves (and their children) from the masses, including carefully monitoring their entertainment so that they don’t listen to gospel, rap, popular R&B, blues and end up sounding black. Paradoxically, they don’t try to become white either, but end up in this narrow privledged world of like-minded people. I’m oversimplifying, of course, and probably pissing off somebody out there so I’ll guess I’ll shut up now… mumble mumble mumble…
I don’t get it. Dennis Haysbert, for instance, doesn’t have a trace of BVE in his speech, but his voice couldn’t even plausibly be that of a white guy to me. Why does it make people so upset to note that there is a difference in the timbre of black peoples’ voices completely separate from their speech style? I’ll grant that it’s not universal - it’s a matter of averages. But the majority of black people, no matter how they speak, sound black to me.
I don’t know who Dennis Haysbert is, but I suspect that there is a trace of AAVE in his manner of speaking. You think you don’t hear it because he doesn’t have any of the grammatical or vocabulary typical of AAVE, but you don’t realize that you’re unconsciously hearing the typical pronunciation of AAVE, mostly in the vowel sounds. Hearing an “accent,” particularly with regard to pronunciation, is not as easy for someone not trained in this as one might expect.
The thread got moved to IMHO. Well, IMHO, it could have stayed here, but I’m not a mod. There have apprently been a few studies suggesting that in America, at least, people can tell race from a person’s voice with astonishing accuracy, even if the person is carefully speaking American Standard English.
I’m inclined to say that it’s nearly all cultural, especially since you can point to exceptions fairly easily, and a lot of professional broadcasters seem to be able to train themselves not to do it, just like broadcasters who started out with a regional accent of some sort. KGO, our local talk radio station, has a couple of black announcers who do not sound black, for instance.
Thing is, it really isn’t a matter of an accent. It’s… something else. Tone, pitch, something. Because I’ve heard people, announcers etc. speak and can instantly tell if they’re black. And I’ve never been wrong. Another funny thing, it only works with black men. Women, I can’t tell.
Can black people tell if someone’s white? Isn’t that where the term ‘honky’ came from (sounding nasally like a goose’s honk)?
Tone and pitch make up an accent. It’s just accents people, it’s really not that deep. Black people grow up and socialize with black people, white people grow up and socialize with with people; that’s exactly how accents are made. That’s why both groups have different accents. Why is it so hard to accept something that simple?
That signature white nasal voice is strictly an American (and Canadian) phenomenon. I just watched E!‘s Wild on Trinidad, and the white Trinis’ voices were just as bassy as the black Trinis’. Same goes for the black American accents.
> Isn’t that where the term ‘honky’ came from (sounding nasally like a goose’s
> honk)?
No, the word started as “bohunk,” which was a slang term for immigrants for East Europe, probably because many of them were from Bohemia or Hungary. This was then modified to “hunky” and then to “honky.” In AAVE, this then came to apply to any white person, not just one from Eastern Europe. (I suspect this was because many American blacks were living in inner city neighborhoods not far from Eastern European immigrant neighborhoods and the term they used for the people in the next neighborhood became the general term for whites. Some people think that the word “honky” may have also come from a term used among African-Americans before that time that derived from a Wolof (an African language that did have some words brought over with slaves) word that meant “pink,” but that’s a little dubious.
You know, I don’t understand why people post their own clever personal derivations of words without first checking in a dictionary if there’s any plausibility to them. I understand why someone could come up with such derivations, but when you post them on the SDMB you’re putting them in print. Dictionaries are cheap. Wouldn’t it make sense to have one by your side as you post?
Both dictionary.com and websters.com sound only half as sure as themselves as you do. That “bohunk” thing sounds so trite and complicated it might as well be an urban legend. Whites in the U.S. are stereotyped as having nasal, “honky” voices. It’s such a simple, obvious explination that I’m going to have to skip the dictionary folks’ “I dunno, maybe” guesses and go with Occam’s Razor.
Tone and pitch make up accent? Ok, quick lesson: pitch refers to the frequency of sound, the “highness” or “lowness” of it. For example, the pitch of Barry White’s voice is lower than average. Tone generally refers to the ‘timbre’ of a sound, the mixture of pitches that give it its unique quality. Neither of these has anything whatsoever to do with ones accent, and we don’t just “accept” it because their appears to be fundamental difference in the “tone” and “pitch” of black and white people’s voices that is unrelated to how they speak.
Chalking it up to socialization is completely insufficient; especially since you yourself acknowledged that the pitch and tone of black people’s voices differ from those of white people. Unless of course you think the pitch of Barry White’s voice is something he acquired from socializing exclusively with those with basso profundo voices.
As stated above, I am in the camp that believes there is a quality that is fundamentally different between black people’s and white people’s voices. In my experience, black people tend to have deeper voices than white people, and there is a roundness or fullness that it generally lacking in white people. Is it so hard to accept that there could be physiological differences between black people and white people? Here’s another: black people tend to have darker skin than white people. No, really! It turns out that this feature is the origin of the terms “black” and “white”.
It’s certainly possible that this is do to a different manner of production; black people could deliberately use a slightly lower register than white people. But isn’t it conceivable that there’s a physical difference in the hardware?
Of course, it’s hard to tell in the end, because as Wendell Wagner points out waaay above, it’s hard to lose all traces of an accent. I can’t think of a way to study this scientifically without finding enough white people raised by black families or vice versa, and that seems rather difficult.
I can easily make my voice more nasal without much effort, and I’m certain I’d speak that way naturally if everybody who taught me to talk spoke that way too. Of course the main pitch of a person’s voice is inborn, but some of it can also be affected. Here’s a blantant example.
No it’s not concievable when it’s already been pointed out that these differences only exist in the U.S., which has a political black/white dichotomy. If there’s a difference in the “hardware”, then why doesn’t this difference exist for nobody else in the world except for black Americans? Why do Asian-Americans sound exactly like white Americans (or black Americans)? And nobody said anything about “deliberately” using a lower register; I’m not saying that blacks are deliberately affecting an accent for the sole purpose of being different from whites. I’m saying blacks and whites in the U.S. have effectively been as seperate as nations, so of course there are going to be white accents and black accents.
Haven’t you heard black children of white families talk before? They naturally have perfect white accents.
This crap just infuriates me so much. Anytime somebody notices a difference in black Americans, they’re ready to jump through loops to cast them into a whole different dimension because of it. It’s not a freaking mystery of the Earth, it’s just a GD ACCENT!!!