Does race determine the sound of your voice?

[zemelmete]

kirusabi said:

I don't believe race has anything to do with voice pitch, voices change due to accent plain and simple, If a black child was raised in a white family with texan accents in the middle of nowhere i can assure you you cannot tell if you heard him over the phone he was black. Its almost innate, we pick up from our parents how to pitch our voices and train them subconciously as such to carry certain accents - much like children learning to roll their "r's"

I do believe that race has to do with voice pitch. For your knowledge english isn't my mother tongue so I hardly hear even difference between american and brittish english not to mention about texan, californian etc. accents. But I hear difference in radio or some music tape when is singing "white" or "black".

[kirusabi]

zemelmete said:

I do believe that race has to do with voice pitch. For your knowledge english isn't my mother tongue so I hardly hear even difference between american and brittish english not to mention about texan, californian etc. accents. But I hear difference in radio or some music tape when is singing "white" or "black".

I disagree, I believe its only because of accent that voices have different pitch. what you just pointed out was music, which is a great example of voice differenciating due to culture and accent, joss stone has been mistaken black by many a listener.

[zemelmete]

kirusabi said:

I disagree, I believe its only because of accent that voices have different pitch. what you just pointed out was music, which is a great example of voice differenciating due to culture and accent, joss stone has been mistaken black by many a listener.

You can't speak about difference of accents inside english language because they sound all the same (i.e. english) for me! I really badly can tell even the difference between american and brittish pronouncation (especially in songs). But I can tell how looks singer just listening songs!

[kirusabi]

zemelmete said:

You can't speak about difference of accents inside english language because they sound all the same (i.e. english) for me! I really badly can tell even the difference between american and brittish pronouncation (especially in songs). But I can tell how looks singer just listening songs!

not to be argumentative but when did i limit it to english accents? there are accents in every language, i speak a dialect and i myself have an accent that is different to others of my race when i speak english, my uncle speaks french fluently, so does his friend they are of the same race, yet my uncles french differs to his friends, because my/my uncle's family were not originally french and carry a different accent to begin with- this was translated into my uncle's way of speaking. It has nothing to do with his race.

[zemelmete]

You see, I can hear difference between african-american and white-american voices, even if they propably speak in the same dialect with the same accents.

[kirusabi]

by american-american i'm thinking you mean native americans? yes, but with this said, which brings me back to the point- its a cultural thing that decides the pitch of a voice than a race thing- are u still saying due to what race u are ure voice differs?

if we placed a newborn white child in a native american tribe and he learned to speak english after a few years of being around the native american culture, the pitch of his voice would be determined by the culture he was brought up with giving him an accent even if the slightest. remeber still ths child was not native american.

[zemelmete]

kirusabi said:

by american-american i'm thinking you mean native americans?

Sorry, i made mistake (now I have edited). Instead american-american I wanted to write african-american. I'm just too tired now.

[zemelmete]

kirusabi said:

if we placed a newborn white child in a native american tribe and he learned to speak english after a few years of being around the native american culture, the pitch of his voice would be determined by the culture he was brought up with giving him an accent even if the slightest. remeber still ths child was not native american.

I do not really agree. I can say that after my personal experience. As other members of Dodona know, I'm half latvian and half khanty after nationality. I speak in latvian really excellent without accent but my voice timbre is more khanty-like and differs from regular latvian voice timbre. They always recognise my voice in telephone.


Let's speak about icelandian singer Bjork. Haven't you noticed that she has very original voice (at least in european scale)? All other icelandic singers, which I have heared, have "normal european" voices.

[mike2]

It's good to have a Uralic person on the board.

It's amazing all the different types of people that come here. I think this kind of diversity makes Dodona more respectable. We've got Europeans, Berbers, Near Easterners, Jews, Egyptians, Khanties, Kazakhs, Turks, Chinese, Somalis, Ethiopians, black Americans, everything. We just need some Bushmen, Polynesians, and Australian aborigines and we'll be all-set.