US vocal-fry.

They say it started with the Kardashians.

But I'm not so sure.

But at a stage every US reality program had mainly women ending their sentences on this low "r" note.

"Life, sometimes I'm so tirerrred of it".

www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: CaptainHalf
They say it started with the Kardashians.

But I'm not so sure.

But at a stage every US reality program had mainly women ending their sentences on this low "r" note.

"Life, sometimes I'm so tirerrred of it".

I’m reading this with Cinderella “I’m coming home” playing at the same time. You would be hard pressed to find a vocal fry like his.
On the other hand, I do pick up immediately on the social media young girls who force it. Drives me insane.

I believe it originated about the same time as when females (mainly) started pretending that every sentence needs to sound like it is a question. I am not sure what the reasons are for this, but I believe it has its roots with surfer/valley girl talk that started in southern california. So it seems all females and alot of men, desire speaking in the same way as Pauly Shore.

a reply to: dust2023

I was a teenager in the mid sixties and I recall first hearing this ending of sentences in a question like way, even if they were not questions. Prior to that point, the mid to late sixties ending a non-question sentence as if it was a question was uncommon. When I did begin to hear it it amused me because it made no sense so I paid attention to it. I recall thinking at the time that the people, again mostly girls, were unsure that what they were saying was being understood or believed by the people they were talking to, so the ending of a statement with the lifting of the voice was another way of saying , ''ya know what I mean?''

I lived in northern California, SF area but I think you are correct in your notion of surfers and valley girls. Once those two began to become popular as entertainment vehicles those vocal idiosyncrasies were used in numerous comedy moves of the next generation and that whole style took off as a common manner of speech.

That was cool to watch being explained so well. That tone of indifference, or a know-it-all, has been the sound irking me with that type of voice. Snobby rich kids and stuff, and authority figures are all things that make me wanna slap a mofo. lol Throw in the ''literally'', and I will likely make a very apparent snapping almost an uadible break of mind and soul. At times I feel my soul leave my body, which means running and following it fast because the body will have no conscience, and staying with the annoyance is going to end badly.

I always thought it was called 'up-talking'. Now it's cool to not pronounce 'T' when talking. It drives me nuts when news announcers do it. Curtain becomes 'curan' and button becomes 'bu-un'. But then my father was a high school english teacher, and you never said 'yeah' around him.

originally posted by: nugget1
I always thought it was called 'up-talking'. Now it's cool to not pronounce 'T' when talking. It drives me nuts when news announcers do it. Curtain becomes 'curan' and button becomes 'bu-un'. But then my father was a high school english teacher, and you never said 'yeah' around him.

I think that is on the rise with the popularity of American "ghetto" slang. It seems that wherever that actually originated at (and once again I think it was southern Cali - gangster rap scene) is where that sort of thing emerged. It is probably the only Ebonics affectation that seems to be trending in alot of spheres. And it is annoying.

Then again no one talks with the same affectations that people had say from 1935 to around 1960 (in English of course).

One of my favorite new accents are the mixing of Jamaican slang accent with Canadian Toronto accents. It's downright hilarious sounding.

I can'd find a good example, but I will try later.

Here is a synopsis from what seems to be a canadian radio personality from Jamaica:

I didn’t watch the entire video but I’d like to pitch in my two cents about vocal fry.

I don’t have an opinion on its pervasiveness in speech, and in fact I think people who bitch about it are petty in seizing upon the most trivial of reasons to create divisions among people.

However, I do know that vocal fry has legitimate benefits that speakers and singers alike can enjoy.

There are certain times when the larynx gets stuck in a forward-tilted position. Certain people, like coaches, speak for extended periods of time at higher pitches (in order to be heard across distances). Some singers make extensive use of the “belting” technique (sing high in their chest voice), or generally sing in a high register.

The higher in your vocal range you go, the more the larynx tilts forward. The more time you spend in that part of your range, the more stuck it will get in that tilted position. So in both of the preceding examples are prime candidates for such an issue, which manifests as vocal tension and fatigue.

Enter “vocal fry”.

Vocal fry is a vocal register. Specifically, it is the lowest register. You can easily create vocal fry by singing a descending scale past the lowest clear pitch you can sing, until your voice makes a a croaking, creaky, “zombie” sort of sound.

Sustaining that sound, say for an entire breath, instantly relieves the tension of the forward-tilted larynx experienced by voice professionals and others who rely on their voices in their daily lives.

This is not meant as an attack on how anyone speaks.

I only really noticed it on reality TV channels, and they've got to do a lot of speaking.
The action there is maybe 2 percent, and the rest is everyone's feelings about it.
So everything in that genre ends up sounding a bit jaded.

I mean English-speaking South Africans, especially in Cape Town, also do a very flat, jaded tonality, like a stoned hippy, even when they're not stoned: "Like whatever happens, hey shew-wow bru".

a reply to: CaptainHalf

I did not mean to imply that you were attacking folks. Could have been more clear in that. I did not interpret the OP that way.

In vocal pedagogy circles, which I have some experience in, folks can be ruthlessly judgmental about speakers who use vocal fry.

There's almost something reassuring about it:

"Like we had this major drama, and tried to scratch each others' eyes out, but today is thingies' (I lost count) birthday, so we decided to get along. Life's too short for rifts and rivalries".

If there's a hit we'll see it on the news channels (most of which are becoming disturbingly like "reality" channels).

At least on screen it's like the vocal equivalent of a fade-out scene .... down with my croaky voice, up with my current boyfriend's crappy hip-hop song.

So why am i watching reality TV?

It's a fitness thing - every time there's an ad break it's 30 push-ups.