A few episodes back, Grant and Martha discussed what linguists call “creaky voice.” Many of you wrote to ask for more examples of this curious speech trait. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Creaky Voice Speech Trait”
Martha, a while back we did a call about creaky voice. Do you remember that one?
Of course.
It’s kind of the opposite of falsetto. It’s when people speak with this low, almost gravelly voice in a kind of a confiding way, as if they’ve got something to tell you with some kind of sincerity, or maybe it’s a little secret, or they kind of want you to believe what they’re saying, right?
I picture them, you know, shrugging their shoulders a little bit.
Maybe.
Shoulders up around their ears.
Well, a lot of people emailed us about that. They were delighted, first of all, to find out that there’s a term for something they’d long since noticed. And most of them said they noticed it in the speech of young women, which it does feature there, but men do it too.
And a couple people emailed and said, you know what? I need more examples. I think I know what you’re talking about. I’m pretty sure. But can you play some sounds for us of people speaking with a creaky voice?
So we found some. And here they are. Take a listen to this and tell me what you think.
This is actually like an apartment building. It’s weird. We’re like on the third floor. And, I mean, they broke up and got back together like five, six times, something like that.
As you can hear, Martha, they kind of drop their voice. It’s a different tone, right? It’s not a normal speaking voice. It’s almost intimate. I mean, not necessarily sexually or romantically intimate, but personally intimate.
Yeah, or almost apologetic or like they don’t care or something. Do you think it makes the speaker sound a little more likable? Like, did it make you feel a little more friendly towards them?
No.
Oh, that’s interesting. Does it work for you?
Well, a little bit, and that’s definitely one of the features of some creaky voice speech. As we said on the first time we talked about this, creaky voice is used for a lot of different reasons and a lot of different languages by a lot of different people.
One of the uses is to make the other person feel more friendly towards you. We’ll have links to these audio clips on our website, and you can listen there, and I’ll see if I can dig up a few more.
And in the meantime, if you have a question about any aspect of language, call us, 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-WAYWORD or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
