 |
| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
|
Michael To find out why many Germans speak English with a terrible accent, you only need to listen closely to a native English speaker and pay attention to the intonation. While German has hardly any tonality, English is pure sing-song. Americans raise and lower their voices several times in a sentence, while Germans continue to drone on at the same pitch. To pronounce English correctly as a foreign language, Germans have to make a real effort and incorporate melodies like a canary. Because I only speak English at work, I have already adopted such a sing-song that I regularly have to pull myself together when I speak German so that it doesn't sound Americanized.
Now, American youth of the last 10 years have gotten into the habit of expanding this sing-song and have added a few more components, so much so that it regularly infuriates narrow-minded adults like myself when I have to listen to brain-dead chatter with these mannerisms. The first bad habit is the so-called "upspeak," the raising of the voice at the end of a sentence. While this is normal for questions, it shouldn't be done at the end of every sentence, but that's exactly what Millennials do these days: "So I went to the cafe? Ordered a drink? It was pretty expensive?" It's enough to drive you crazy.
| Video: Is vocal fry stupid or unhealthy? |
| Video: Scientific explanation of vocal fry. |
The second bad habit is the so-called Vocal Fry and for that, I need to elaborate further. Humans have a total of three so-called registers that determine the pitch of spoken (or sung) voice, regulated by the "glottis," a gap in the throat between the vocal cords. In the normal state of this gap, humans speak with a normal pitch. When the vocal cords are tightly constricted, falsetto is produced, which means a high-pitched voice like Mickey Mouse. Serious people don't do this. Now, if the vocal cords are relaxed so that air bubbles through the gap with a vibrating sound, the so-called strohbass, also known as the fry register, is created. In English, this is called "vocal fry" or "creaky voice," and the use of this register is, for no good reason, spreading almost epidemically among young women and gay men.
Prominent fashion dolls croak and coo these days, producing very awkward noises, seemingly without noticing they're out of whack. The sound is not easy to describe; if you have never consciously noticed it, it's best to listen to it on the referenced YouTube videos and endulge. It sounds completely idiotic, this croaking. But if an uneducated young woman is sitting in some talk show, you can time it with a stopwatch until she starts doing it. What are these young people thinking these days? Sometimes I wonder if the future will be a hopelessly dystopian world.
){kind=link}