It’s not often a phonetic term becomes virtually
a household word, but vocal fry is more or less that. Of course familiarity isn’t the same thing
as understanding, in fact it breeds contempt, so I thought I’d devote a video to the phenomenon. As many people understand it, ‘vocal fry’
means a low, creaky kind of voice which is used at the end of sentences by young American
females of a certain type, and which is widely considered irritating, and even dangerous. The Kardashians like we get through things
and we get through them together My answer was no Life is about hardship... Enjoying the fruits of my labor ...and how you get through them Creating so many memories here Memories is all that we have at the end of the day I wish that everybody knew how beautiful and delicious your heart was.
–Thank you So let’s explore all of that. Vocal fry is indeed a creaky kind of voice,
in fact 'creaky voice' is the technical term preferred in Britain, it's the one I was taught,
while vocal fry has been used more in America. The two different names highlight the two
main features of the sound. Firstly and most importantly, creaking sounds
have a very low frequency, low enough that you can make out individual creaks. Falsetto, modal, and then fry... Normally the vocal cords or vocal folds vibrate
so fast, often hundreds of times a second, that on video they’re just a blur, like
the flapping of an insect’s wings. But in creaky voice you can actually make
out individual flaps. Secondly, like the sound of food frying, vocal
fry is very often irregular. That is, the successive vibrations can be
very erratic, unlike the regularity of normal voicing, here slowed down massively by stroboscopy. A really common pattern in creaky voice or
vocal fry is semi-regularity, with bigger, longer vibrations alternating with smaller,
shorter ones. Next question: is vocal fry used at the end
of sentences? Well, certainly the most common place for
it to turn up in English is as the end part, the aftermath, of a falling intonation pattern. That’s where it was in all those examples
from the Kardashians. And it’s not at all hard to find videos
with young American women ending practically every sentence in vocal fry. The risks of public Wi-Fi sometimes outweigh
the benefits The director of mobile product marketing for
Samsung Talk to us about some of the risks of public
Wi-Fi. –Sure, so... How do you protect yourself around public Wi-Fi? Make sure you use it with a VPN What are some of the reasons we need to still use them? What's an example of a risk that you might
incur if you were on public Wi-Fi ? The Romantic ballet period where the gender
roles of ballet kind of diverged, technique wise
They're just very different skill sets There are just some things due to biology
that men can do that females can't athletically And here is an ad for Airbnb from over a decade ago I'm staying here for the weekend I can book from anywhere Guests and hosts can leave reviews for each
other You can read reviews left by previous guests Treat myself to something special once in a while When I'm out of town I put my place on Airbnb In fact, after hearing so much vocal fry,
it may be worth reminding ourselves that American women don’t have to do this with their falling
intonations. Ah, sorry about that. If there's one thing this channel is known
for, it's all the clips I show to back up my points. All this research requires access to a lot
of stuff, and it’s very frustrating when online access is blocked, say because of where
we’re located. Which can easily happen when you’re travelling. I was in Spain while I was researching my
video on how the word 'can’t' is strong but the word 'can' is weak – at least it is usually,
but coming right up is a double exception. Now while I was there, I was able to carry
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falling intonations don’t have to end in vocal fry, are some examples from former ABC
reporter Amy Robach. Tell us what your recovery was like It restores faith in democracy in a weird way Now stepping up to become heroes And certainly this is timely to say the least And thank you so much for joining us today And our thanks to Maria Villarreal for that report Now does she have less vocal fry there because
she's a bit older, in a job with some responsibility? Certainly there are some people who associate
vocal fry with the very young and the idle rich. I'd like a large coffee
–Room for cream? Totally leave room for cream
–Why are you talking like that? Why are YOU talking like that? I can't help it, it's my voice Nobody actually talks like this, you choose to talk like this and today I chose to talk
like this. Pretty [__] annoying, isn't it? It's an affectation that annoying teenagers
and rich people use to sound like they don't give a [__].
–Excuse me, some of us would like to order. On YouTube, that scene from the comedy drama
series Loudermilk has received countless rapturous comments from people applauding this character
for calling out vocal fry, for describing it as not real, an affectation, and used only
by teens and Kardashians, to signal indifference. Clearly the hate is real enough, but for a scene that
appeared as recently as 2017, it’s pretty off the mark. If vocal fry signals indifference, why is
it ok for warning people about public WiFi and generating enthusiasm for Airbnb? And teenagers, and rich people? Here’s a reporter, like Amy Robach, for
the public radio show Science Friday. I don't think she's trying to tell us that
she doesn't give a damn. When I started getting all of these emails
and angry tweets about my voice it got me thinking
What's happening in my throat when I use vocal fry? Let's clarify that...
Speech and language pathologist at NYU She actually takes it a step further...
They hated it Also not signalling indifference is the Boston
University professor who was the person being examined in that nasendoscopy video, and who
provides its narration The base of the tongue and the epiglottis...
the larynx... the vocal folds... the trachea... running speech...
breathy voice... vocal impairments... the acoustic measurements... the structure and the function of the larynx Those clips, incidentally, nicely demonstrate how vocal fry isn't restricted to the end
of sentences. I recently made a video on the rise of hard
attack, which means beginning an initial vowel with a glottal stop. In that video I gave the standard, simplistic
definition of a glottal stop, namely a brief period in which the vocal folds are held together. In reality, it's almost impossible for the
vibrating vocal folds to stop instantaneously. It's more common to transition into a glottal
stop via low frequency vocal fry. Here is hard attack on the word 'epiglottis'. This is the glottal stop, but look at the preceding word 'the'. In order to make that glottal stop, the vocal
folds first slow right down, into low frequency vibrations with a high degree of vocal fold
contact. That’s creaky voice, or vocal fry. And here's the thing I didn't say in my hard
attack video. Glottal stops, in any language, can be just
a short period of vocal fry where it's impossible to say that any one of those long vocal fold
closures is 'the' glottal stop. But more importantly I would describe the word 'importantly' here
as beginning with hard attack. And I would generally transcribe it with the
symbol for a glottal stop. But in physical reality this glottal stop
is a period of vocal fry. So the increase in the use of hard attack
actually means that we hear masses of vocal fry at the beginnings of words as well as
at the ends of sentences. And it's really no surprise that some speakers
end up just staying in vocal fry practically all the time. I wanted to experience that for myself and
it was incredibly powerful and I thought it was super inspiring and it's amazing like
what I'm doing and so many people have told me that like I've inspired them and I wasn't
expecting them to react like that Next question: is vocal fry just a female
thing? No it's not I'd rather have a little bit too much development than none at all, like we see in the original lines that are more jokey and uh... whatever else it is I do on a regular basis What is a three-head cassette player? better than any two head cassette player
but a two head will get the job done Like and subscribe.
Thanks for watching And it's not just used by Americans Let's get into it... the wireless go... unobbtrusive... connector... with your hands... the same way... video... cable... shirt...
device... adapter... like so If you don't wear socks and then walk around all day you will get blisters this is not an ordinary day in my life by any stretch of the imagination China has grown as an international crisis manager in recent years
and that's why it has gotten into the risky business of international bailout lending I would like to finish when when I decide ideally
so I'm trying to do everything properly because I do believe I'm one of the best grass
court players in the world We're like, whatever way you guys want to
get here, way to go. –Right You've got maple syrup on your waffle from the get-go Okay, um the thing is, um here's what we do with this, okay, um, so this is it, the thing
is The last example there shows just how behind
the times that scene from Loudermilk was. As far back as 2012, the BBC were making fun
of vocal fry as used by a trendy British TV executive. Now although female vocal fry was a relative
novelty in Britain back then, it had already come and gone as a widespread feature of male
speech. I was taught that creaky voice was that thing
used by RP speaking men. I know you all right, you're Shere Khan. Precisely. Then you should also know that everyone runs from Shere Khan Mister... Bond.
James Bond. Sean Connery was a working class Scot and the director of that first Bond film, Doctor
No, who tried to teach Connery how to behave like an upper-class Englishman, was Terence
Young I shoot very little film, in fact I'm a bit
stupid because I should shoot more. Very often you need something for your editing
afterwards and you haven't got it And of course Bond was created by the upper
class Ian Fleming They're not meant for schoolboys The actor chosen to voice Shere Khan was
George Sanders. Along with his villainous posh Englishness,
the Disney people were no doubt attracted by the appropriateness of his vocal fry for
a purring tiger. George Sanders played a lot of purring villains. I have a strong feeling that before the day
is out somebody's going to make use of that rather expressive though somewhat old-fashioned
term 'foul play' But RP vocal fry wasn't restricted to murderous
types like Shere Khan and James Bond licensed to kill. It could be the voice of the BBC The French cabinet met at 7:30 tonight under
the presidency of Monsieur Daladier The House of Commons today gave a second reading to two bills The creakiest RP male I've heard was the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S Lewis, who
during the Second World War gave radio talks about Christianity. In these talks I've had to say a good deal
about prayer the whole idea of prayer God has infinite leisure to spare for each
one of us
We've learned how unsympathetic and patronizing charitable people often are When Christ died he died for you individually As far as I'm aware nobody complained about
any of this What about presenting me to the bride? Why are you talking like that? I am Rebecca's favourite cousin Nobody actually talks like this. You choose to talk like this and today I chose
to talk like this. Too bad
–Pretty [___] annoying isn't it? There's a bit of malice in your soul toward
me, isn't there? It's an affectation... And I think you're behaving splendidly over
all this ...that annoying teenagers and rich people
use to sound like they don't give a [___] You know you've grown up a bit since I last
saw you And you don't look like a teenager Oh well, perhaps you're right
–Knock it off Are you rather afraid that somebody might
come down and carry you off? That's an excellent question to ask yourself
in your actual voice Pity, just as we were getting on so nicely Toodle-oo Wow... Bond, James Bond Why are you talking like that? It's an affectation. Pretty annoying, isn't it? Wow... And people who dislike teens and Kardashians
can add speakers of other languages to their hate list. In English, creaky voice is mainly an aspect
of intonation, and in some other languages like Burmese, it can be an aspect of tone,
which is pitch being used to change the meaning of a word Burmese has four tones, low tone, high tone, creaky tone, checked tone. For example Other languages can use vocal fry much more
widely. If you really have a serious life-threatening
allergy to vocal fry, you should maybe think twice before visiting Finland. [Finnish] One thing that all of this strongly suggests
is that vocal fry is not a pathology, something likely to damage your daughter's larynx. It's easy to dismiss such ideas when they're
in the Daily Mail, but some voice professionals have been happy to warn against vocal fry. Instead of having a nice fluid motion when
the vocal folds vibrate, they're vibrating chaotically, and the vocal folds aren't really
designed to do that for long periods of time. Anytime you go out of that design area and
you live in the extremes for an extended period of time, theoretically you can have problems. So vocal fry is bad because it's not what
the body was designed for. Now where have we heard that kind of thing
before? A lot of that scaremongering was linked to
the singing mannerisms of Britney Spears. [Music] But again nobody seemed to be bothered when the same kind of thing had been previously
heard from men [Music] Now if women are using vocal fry more than
men, and it certainly seems to me more pervasive among young American women than it ever was
among old English men, this raises in my mind a question that you never hear mentioned. Is it something that women are just better
at than men? Well, almost never mentioned. Sounds like kind of a cool talent if you ask
me. It's a sore point for me, because despite
all my training vocal fry is something my voice is practically incapable of. And that's another unimpressive thing about
the Loudermilk scene. Satire depends on nailing the thing you're
mocking, and Loudermilk is almost as bad at it as I am. For my money, Cristen Conger on the channel
Stuff Mom Never Told You is much funnier. Whereas if I'm talking to my girlfriends I
get a little more relaxed So true, oh my God, right, right, right, right,
right, right? Right... Oh my God... Right. As a guy with vocal fry envy, I was really
struck when Erik Singer did an informal experiment to see if viewers reacted differently to male
and female vocal fry, when he and Eliza Simpson both read the start of the Gettysburg Address Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal Of course it wasn't a controlled scientific study, but what I noticed was how much better
Eliza was than Erik at doing the vocal fry. There's more of it, and it stands out more
acoustically, as we see on a spectrogram. Eliza's kind of vocal fry is acoustically
very efficient. It generates a lot of acoustic energy, particularly
at high frequencies. Remember that vocal fry typically involves
a lot of vocal fold contact, and we could say that the opposite of this is breathy voice,
where the vocal folds don't make much contact at all, and which is acoustically relatively
inefficient, with less energy in the upper frequency range. My voice is quite breathy and I think that's
related to my creaky inability. There's a really nice moment in the video
on ballet that we sampled earlier on. The speaker is comparing the physical abilities
of women and men. I feel like every ballet dancer has this experience
where they've been working to get their triple pirouette for like four years, and they finally
get it, and then their friend, who's like 'I've never done ballet', comes in and does
it on like his fifth class. And you're like, are you kidding me? It makes a refreshing change to hear a woman
who uses vocal fry doing a parody of a stereotypical male voice. I've never done ballet Strong but a bit stupid, somewhat lacking in female Intuition or sensitivity. And phonetically, of course she lowers her
voice pitch, but she also makes her voice much more breathy. Here's our rather dull male character and his voice is acoustically dull, because
she's taken away his bright upper frequencies. Her own voice has these frequencies. And now look at the vocal fry at the end. These vertical 'striations' are the individual vocal fold pulses. The darker, the more energy they're generating. Visibly this is where her voice quality is
most different from her stereotypical guy. Despite this impressive acoustic energy, I've
seen it claimed that the irregular periodicity of creaky voice challenges automatic speech
processing and recognition systems. Maybe they should have done more training
in Finland. Speaking of which, one Finnish study actually
found that the absence of creaky voice can make non-native speakers sound less fluent. This would make vocal fry not just a physical
skill but a communicative skill too. Finally let's dig deeper into the negative
reactions that female vocal fry clearly does evoke. Given how much creaky voice the world has
experienced without arousing complaint, it seems inescapable that there are elements
of sexism and ageism. But what is it about this feature in particular
that some people don't like hearing from young women? I've always been interested in sound symbolism,
the non-linguistic meanings or associations that speech sounds can carry. So what is it that vocal fry symbolizes? Well, people will sometimes sound creaky first
thing in the morning or when they're very tired or relaxed. I get a little more relaxed It's very low, whereas high pitch can signify excitement. Relaxation can be associated with being blasé,
the attitude of someone who's seen everything, has everything... This is Virgil Mastercard, heir to the Mastercard
fortune. –How do you do Sir? ...or knows everything. Does toppling mean anything to you? It’s throwing the gyroscopic controls of
a guided missile off balance with a radio beam, or something If you've seen it all or done it all, that makes you an authority and authority could
make you a villain... Precisely. ...or the calm voice of the BBC. two bills This blasé know-it-all connotation of male creak... I know you've got a brother who's worried
about you, but you won't go to him for help because you don't approve of him, possibly
because he's an alcoholic, and I know that your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic,
quite correctly I'm afraid ...can help explain not only why Samsung,
Airbnb and countless other brands are happy to use creaky women to inform and explain,
but also why it can trigger sexist rage in some. How dare young women act like they know so
much? Which is more or less the conclusion of this
recent study. Some people are bothered not by unearned authority
but rather by what they perceive as immature boredom or indifference ...people use to sound
like they don't give a [___] And of course the creaky women in that scene
have been directed to look stereotypically and annoyingly bored even with the sound off. Note by the way that the blasé bored know-it-all
connotation makes vocal fry pretty much the opposite of the equally hated Uptalk. this pathologist and other people who hate
it which allegedly is so terrible because it
makes women sound like they don't know anything. Vocal fry, inappropriate confidence, 'I know
everything'. Uptalk, inappropriate lack of confidence, 'I'm not even sure what I'm saying'. Sexist haters, make up your mind! Clearly for many speakers vocal fry and or
Uptalk have become just neutral defaults: how they talk. So those confident or non-confident connotations
are in the mind not of the speaker but of the listener. To end, let's go back to that acoustically
efficient brightness that female creak often has compared to the more dull, purring male
variety. It really doesn't sound like frying food to
me. It's much more like
an old door opening Now the last thing that I want to do is give
ammunition to the haters, but creaking sounds are something that, completely aside from
gender politics, can get on people's nerves. So is it any surprise that creaky sounds have
long been associated with the horror genre I am Dracula. Just try to stay out of my way, just try. Red rum, red rum, red rum [Japanese] I mean, would Airbnb really want to present
itself like this?
