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What does voice pitch indicate?
Women in almost every culture speak in deeper voices than Japanese women. American women's voices are lower than Japanese women's, Swedish women's are lower than American's, and Dutch women's are lower than Swedish women's. Vocal difference is one way of expressing social difference, so that in Dutch society, which doesn't differentiate much between its image of the ideal male and the ideal female, there are few differences between male and female voice. The Dutch also find medium and low pitch more attractive than high pitch.
That is from the new and interesting The Human Voice: How this Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Essential Clues About Who We Are, by Anne Karpf. Here is an interesting dissertation abstract on voice pitch, some of which relates to economic ideas on signaling.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 5, 2006 at 02:11 PM in Science | Permalink
Comments
Interestingly, all the Japanese women of my acquaintance also speak in lower voices when speaking in English than they do when speaking Japanese.
Posted by: John Thacker at Sep 5, 2006 2:58:26 PM
Interestingly, all the Japanese women of my acquaintance also speak in lower voices when speaking in English than they do when speaking Japanese.
And (as a male) I typically pitch my voice deeper when speaking Japanese than when speaking English. Not always so, but usually. That said, I'm not sure how much it really indicates. Korean women don't seem to pitch their voices particularly high, but Korean culture is not notably more "woman-friendly" or gender-equal than Japanese culture.
On the other hand, when Lord Curzon visited Korea and Japan in the late 19th century, he did (in his condescending way) consider Korean women stronger and more mannish than Japanese women, and Korean men more effeminate than Japanese men, so perhaps other observers might differ on this point.
Posted by: Taeyoung at Sep 5, 2006 3:48:26 PM
Perhaps I am just revealing my cultural ignorance here but is the pitch mostly a factor of the speed at which a person is talking?
I say this because the last time I had the privilege of hearing Japanese woman speak it seemed like they were talking awful fast (with a high pitch). Yet when they switched to English, they talked slower and with a much lower pitch. I have also noticed that when English speakers start talking faster their pitch rises.
Posted by: The Chieftain of Seir at Sep 5, 2006 5:51:45 PM
Not that I want to open myself up for a flame war, but Chris Yeh's law of Asian-American voices states that the lower an American-born Asian female's voice, the more Westernized and sexually adventurous she is. I've never found an exception.
Posted by: Chris Yeh at Sep 5, 2006 6:38:57 PM
This link fits with this post, I think. The evolutionary psychological explanation for why music persists in communities.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/09/03/survival_of_the_harmonious/?page=full
Posted by: jason voorhees at Sep 5, 2006 6:45:41 PM
I find that men (at least in America) pitch their voices down, while women pitch their voices up. Gay men and women stop pitching their voices, so that gay men seem to have higher pitches than straight men, and gay women seem to have lower pitch than straight women. When in fact, they've just stopped altering their voices to societal standards. And it is those standards that give Japanese speakers an even more extreme hi/lo spread.
Posted by: Peter at Sep 5, 2006 9:33:04 PM
Fascinating post, thanks. You might also find this interesting: http://www1.wfubmc.edu/voice/singers/bogart_bacall.htm
Leave it to American Medicine to reduce two of the greatest voices in film history to a disorder!
Bogart-Bacall Syndrome, or BBS, describes a cluster of symptoms sometimes affecting those with low-pitched speaking voices, including vocal fatigue, soreness or pain in the throat with prolonged use and hoarseness. Bacall was said to have practiced her lower register for To Have and Have Not but it later became her trademark and natural speaking voice. Sometimes a syndrome is just a sexy voice….
Posted by: Hannah at Sep 6, 2006 12:16:33 AM
In traditional Muslim cultures such as Saudi Arabia women have a much lower status than western or Japanese women. Does anyone know how high their voices are?
Posted by: joan at Sep 6, 2006 2:10:49 AM
Yeah, I don't know if you could consider this a universal law, but it seems to make sense.
So does, this mean that women lowering the pitch of their voices would influence gender equity in some way? or is it just a phenomonon of the culture solely?
Posted by: Dustin at Sep 6, 2006 5:21:55 AM
Hannah - it's funny you should link that. Most (female) vocal majors are actually taught to pitch their voices higher if their voices tend low, to avoid just what you describe.
Chris Yeh - you've been watching too much anime, where the trope is that the "bad girls" have deeper voices (e.g. Queen Beryl in Sailor Moon) and the good girls have the traditional cutesy high-pitched voice (e.g. Sailor Moon). :) In fact, I bet that would be a fun experiment - there's bound to be a female Japanese voice actor who has played both roles. It'd be interesting to hear the difference.
Posted by: FTB at Sep 6, 2006 8:29:00 AM
FTB:
There are certainly heroines with low voices. Takayama Minami has a low voice regardless of her role. (Including her young boy roles, such as Edogawa Conan.) Mitsuishi Kotono, who played Sailor Moon, also has a large range in her voice, and has played older female characters will low voices... Mirelle Bouquet in Noir, for example. Kawasumi Ayako and Hayashibara Megumi also play both heroines with low and high voices. (For example, Lafiel from Crest of the Stars and Mahoro from Mahoromatic for Kawasumi-san, and a host of roles for Hayashibara-san.)
You can't say it's a "good girl" versus "bad girl" thing, though certainly the ditsy/nice girl roles get higher voices than the cynical, world-weary, or serious ones. Of course.
Posted by: John Thacker at Sep 6, 2006 9:48:40 AM
People who smoke often speak with lower pitch.
Posted by: HN at Sep 6, 2006 10:36:06 AM
Isn't voice pitch related to the length of your vocal cords, which is presumably closely correlated with height? Is this the correct order of average height by county: Holland > Sweden > Amercia > Japan?
Posted by: Steve at Sep 6, 2006 12:34:27 PM
one question that comes up is: what do they mean by a japanese voice? are they talking about the high-pitched, fluttery tokyo voice or have they taken a large sampling from around the country?
this seems like a meaningless study based on stereotypes. there's a wide variance in the pitch of women's voices in japan. in my experience the women's voices are pitched lower and louder in places like osaka and in the countryside. it's usually in the larger cosmopolitan cities like tokyo where you have that stereotypical tittering japanese girl with the high-pitched voice.
Posted by: jeff at Sep 6, 2006 2:44:27 PM
In West Africa, there's a cultural norm that women speak higher than their natural voices and men speak lower. At least that's what a Cameroonian girl I was dating told me long ago.
Still, it's silly to say that there are few differences in vocal pitch between the sexes in the Netherlands. I guess that explains all those Dutch men who sing soprano in the opera and all the Dutch female baritones.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 6, 2006 5:29:51 PM
When reading this blog the statement that stood out to me the most was, "The Dutch also find medium and low pitch more attractive than high pitch." I think that is an underlying point that should be considered when thinking about pitch. Humans will typically always do what is more appealing to the opposite sex. In America if a woman walked up to you and had a voice that sounded like a man you would instantly be less attracted to her. Another good point that I think was made was that the faster you talk the higher your pitch gets. In American's lives if you get excited and start talking you begin to go about 100 mph and your voice shoots up. Japenese is a faster language than English, and Enlish is a faster language than Dutch. So I believe that pitch just really indicates the speed of your language and what is "socially appealing."
Posted by: Heather Pritchard at Sep 6, 2006 6:14:07 PM
Japenese is a faster language than English, and Enlish is a faster language than Dutch.
While I can't comment about languages that don't exist, I guess that explains why Pieter van den Hoogenband can swim 25 meters faster than the commentators can pronounce his name.
Posted by: Loki on the run at Sep 6, 2006 8:59:14 PM
I agree with you Heather because there is a correlation with the faster your language is, the higher pitched voice you may have. I also believe that the average physical size of a particular race plays as big or a bigger part in the pitch of their voices. For example Northern Mexican people have a high voice versus Caucasians or African Americans.
Posted by: wbg at Sep 6, 2006 10:57:55 PM
Hi all, this is my first post on the blog since becoming a phd student at GMU. I did read the blog before that but since it now is ' homework ' to read the blog I'll show I've been doing it diligently :)
I actually had a discussion about this with my dutch girlfriend; ( me being dutch also ), and other dutch females and they all expressed some aversion to the american women's voice pitch which they regarded as immature.
Something to do with acting female and apparently the dutch females don' t like it because they regard it as some kind of fakeness.
I personally prefer the higher voices cause they sound friendlier. Besides that, I think english already sounds friendlier than dutch..
Posted by: ralph ruben emmers at Sep 7, 2006 3:51:31 AM
I have long noticed that Japanese women tend to raise their voices to a higher pitch when speaking on the telephone. As for Japanese women speaking slower when speaking English, that would seem to depend on their fluency in English. It would be interesting to test a person with native fluency in both languages. And is there any linguistic data to back up the claim that some languages are spoken more rapidly than others?
Posted by: fred richter at Sep 7, 2006 4:40:36 AM
I don't hear dutch much but as a Southern African I have always heard a great deal of Afrikaans. People speaking Afrikaans always sound to me like they are arguing in gruff voices even when they are being romantic. One Boer told me that it is the ideal language for shouting at a dog in...
Posted by: Stuart at Sep 7, 2006 6:39:53 AM
I am a trained, American, female opera singer. I am a colorcatura soprano, able to sing the highest pitches one can reach. However, when I speak, I tend to have a lower pitched voice. When I was first studying opera, I had a teacher tell me that this difference would "ruin my singing voice" and that I should talk in higher pitch. I did not do this, and my range only increased. So why was I told to speak higher than I naturally did? Something tells me it was a cultural thing...
Posted by: Lisa at Sep 15, 2006 1:19:08 AM
I have a male interest whose voice pitch will often rise, reminding me of a girl.
Does anyone know if this would then mean that he is homosexual?
Or could it mean that he lacks testosterone?
I am interested in dating him. He insists that
he isn't gay but this voice
pitch issue makes me think otherwise.
Any thoughts on this?
Posted by: msmusic6@yahoo.com at Oct 1, 2006 4:28:49 PM
msmusic, even if that correlation were statistically probable, it would not be admissible evidence for a conviction. give the guy a shot.
Posted by: mg at Oct 2, 2006 1:18:04 AM
And the other thing, I've noticed is that the woman's voice rises in pitch when she is asking for something, especially from man. I also do so, absolutely unintentionally.
Posted by: Asia at Apr 4, 2007 7:02:23 AM
