Talk:Creaky voice

Can we have some examples? lysdexia 14:08, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

also called glottal fry

This is also called 'glottal fry'

By whom? I've never heard it called "vocal fry" or "glottal fry" in my life. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 21:38, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Likewise, I've never heard the term and I live in the US where it's ostensibly used.

I don't know if the terms were ever widely used by linguists, but they are used in music (voice training). They tend to be found in the same sources as the term falsetto, which is also uncommon in linguistics. For example, see the site How to Sing Three Notes at the Same Time. kwami 16:48, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

For one, it's referred to as such in Fred Newman's "Mouth Sounds" (table of contents excerpt), which has been in print since 1980. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.248.47.160 (talk) 06:09, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

It's also a primary tehnique used by various metal singers, particularly death/black metal, with added velocity. --Grindlyth (talk) 08:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Khmer in "see also"

I can't find a reason to include the link to Khmer in the See Also section. First off, it's a disambig page, but I read through the whole article at Khmer language and couldn't find a reference to this phonation. Please respond with reasons for its inclusion, or I will remove the link next Wednesday. BonsaiViking 20:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC) disambiguation link repair (You can help!)

See, I'm reading this article 'cos I was trying to figure out how the inherent vowel in Burmese is supposed to be pronounced, and the page MLC Transcription System - linked from Burmese script - has it in the "creaky voice" column, and it didn't make any sense to me, given what I know about creaky voice, that the inherent vowel would be creaky. In any case, I would assume that Khmer might have some manifestation of creaky voice, given the proximity of these two languages, but I looked into it as well and could not find it. The important question this brings up is whether or not to include a list of languages which do implement creaky voice, and how they are manifested if they do, and I just don't have any idea how one would go about finding sourcable information on that. this raven is icy (talk) 00:50, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

"Soft-pedal"

"Creaky voice manifests itself in the idiolects of some American English speakers, particularly at the beginnings of sentences that the speaker wishes to "soft-pedal"." Please explain what is meant by "soft-pedal". 198.150.76.150 16:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know the original author's intent, but I'm wondering if this refers to the sound made by the boss in 'Office Space' when he's trying to get the lead to do something: "Yeaaaaaaaaaah, it's about those T.P.S. reports". Soft-pedal might mean that the speaker wishes to seem polite when they are actually asking something rather difficult. --njh 07:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

You got it. It's also used at the end to sort of "fade out" in some dialects. (I know I'm answering an old post, but I like to leave the impression that we Wikipedians answer people's questions.) Cheers -- trlkly 04:23, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I still think the article should be reworded to make it more clear. I don't know if "soft-pedal" is a well-known phrase, but I had never heard it until reading this article. Also, it'd be nice to have some sources for that paragraph -- especially the part that says it is "frequently adopted by older males in leadership positions in business and politics". What about women in leadership positions or men who aren't in leadership positions? Finally, I also wonder whether the phenomenon of utterance-initial creaky voice refer to specific words, such as "uh", which in my experience does tend to sound glottalized when drawn out, but I don't know of any other words that trigger it. 71.90.131.109 (talk) 02:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC) (OP)

Man. I'm deleting the two sentences; I'm not even going to go into my objections, suffice it to say the list is longer than my-- Well, it's long. For the record, and in case anyone actually wants to back up such an incredibly dubious couple of statements, they read:

Creaky voice manifests itself in the idiolects of some American English speakers, particularly at the beginnings of sentences that the speaker wishes to "soft-pedal". Although this phenomenon is in general more prominent among female American English speakers than among male speakers, it is frequently adopted by older males in leadership positions in business and politics.

Have an attributable day. this raven is icy (talk) 00:27, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'm just going to go ahead and delete the "tired voice" sentence, which is nebulous, and the example, which is just poor. I think there should be examples, and I think the ideas the previous editors were trying to get across are important, but most of what's going on in the latter half of this article is just really poorly executed. I'm tempted to remove the sentence on Korean for being totally out of context, and I'd do the same to the Danish reference if I wasn't already aware that stød is referred to regularly as a manifestation of creaky voice. If whoever wrote them comes back, understand that what you're saying is very vague and needs to be sourced in order to qualify as encyclopedic. this raven is icy (talk) 00:40, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't disagree with the need for clarifying soft-pedal, but far from objectionable, the bit below is both true and helpful to readers with access to media originating in the U.S. It should be re-inserted.

Although this phenomenon is in general more prominent among female American English speakers than among male speakers, it is frequently adopted by older males in leadership positions in business and politics.

Audio

It would be good to have an audio example of the Vietnamese pronunciation of a syllable with this creaky voice. Badagnani 21:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It would be good to have any audio examples on this page. Binksternet 08:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe if I can ever get a microphone that works... -- trlkly 04:24, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

the link to kuow.org is a transcription, the audio recording is also available and is an excellent example of the phenomenon in the Pacific NW. Pity we can't use it. njaard (talk) 09:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

--Error (talk) 23:18, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Frogman

Is Clarence "Frogman" Henry's croaking voice on the last third of his hit song "Ain't Got No Home" an example of creaky voice? If so, it should be mentioned. Binksternet 08:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and no. Yes, he is using a creaky voice function (glottal fry). But, no it shouldn't be mentioned, unless you can find a source calling it that. A quick Google search found nothing. — trlkly 16:10, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

the most annoying sound

is this what the article is talking about? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cVlTeIATBs

this page DESPERATELY needs examples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DJLO (talk • contribs) 20:42, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Scientific American had a short audio "article" on this. You can read about it and hear the 60-second audio here, or just the audio file here. It mentions Britney Spears and Kim Kardashian (maybe other Kardashians too? all of them? I think another article once mentioned Kesha) among other popular female mass media figures have a tendency to use vocal fry, often at the end of a phrase or sentence. The vocal fry article mentions Britney Spears' song, "Oops, I Did It Again" so I went on YouTube and listened for the telltale sound.

See this video which has the lyrics onscreen: Here, at about 52-53 seconds, she begins the phrase "I played with your heart". As she leads into the very first word, that is vocal fry. It can be within a word, too. Here, the "o" in "problem" is where the vocal fry is. Listen at 1:33 for the "that" in the phrase "That is just so typically me" for another instance. Like the first example I gave, she does it at 1:42. --SidP (talk) 00:01, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Just looked again at the Wikipedia vocal fry article, and there's a few articles there too. See this article which has a link in it (this audio file) which specifically has the speaker intending to make the noise.--SidP (talk) 00:06, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't this article just be combined into the "Vocal fry register in speech" section of the vocal fry page?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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• Closing as No Consensus This merger discussion has been open for over a year without yielding clear support to merge or not to merge. I am removing the tags as it doesn't seem likely that a consensus will be reached. Best.4meter4 (talk) 02:49, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

NTFlygongengar (talk) 04:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

No. Different topic. — kwami (talk) 05:08, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. Clearly, it's the same topic, and even a large part of the lead is duplicated for both articles. Klortho (talk) 15:10, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

It seems to me that if any merger happens, it should go the other way: vocal fry should be merged into creaky voice. Most phonations are labeled using some adjective and "voice": modal voice, breathy voice, slack voice, and so on. And the x voice name is the term used when particular types of voice are phonemic in a language. The consonants in Hindi are called breathy-voiced consonants, the consonant and syllabic quality contrast in Javanese is called stiff voice–slack voice or stiff voice–modal voice, the "muddy consonants" in Shanghainese are called slack-voiced, etc. As far as I know, vocal fry is a term used only for the prosodic feature in some sociolects of English, and it's clearly a subtype of creaky voice, not the other way around. — Eru·tuon 19:16, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

+1. That jibes with this comment on that talk page. Klortho (talk) 20:54, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Cool — I guess the perspectives of speech pathology (the other person) and phonetics or phonology (me) can agree in this case. — Eru·tuon 21:19, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Support. Looks like Vocal fry register should be merged here. Benny White (talk) 03:36, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Support moving creaky voice to vocal fry. More academic literature uses vocal fry as opposed to creak.4meter4 (talk) 14:03, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• comment Still oppose, unless s.o. can show how this would result in a coherent article. We have two series of articles, one on phonemic voice qualities, and one on vocal registers. If we were two merge the articles, we'd end up with an article that had two parts, (a) phonemic creaky voice and (b) vocal fry register. I don't see an advantage in doing that. — kwami (talk) 06:17, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Modal voice seems to be a combined article. I'm not an expert, but is the distinction important enough to warrant two sets of articles? Benny White (talk) 18:30, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Probably not. I just don't want to see the two spliced together so they don't cohere as a single topic. — kwami (talk) 21:45, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Though I support the merger, I agree that coherence will be difficult, and we will have to achieve it somehow if we merge. I don't know how books cover the two topics, but vocal fry may be classifiable as an intonational form of creaky voice, as opposed to a suprasegmental phoneme. — Eru·tuon 22:00, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't remember well, but I suspect that's why they're still two articles. It's just easier that way. Combining them would require some dedicated editing. — kwami (talk) 23:07, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Support combining under "Creaky voice" title. --Jtle515 (talk) 08:45, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose Not the same. Creaky voice is a phonetic concept. A vocal fry register is a sociolinguistic concept. Some languages have creaky voice phones but no vocal fry register. Absolutely not the same. Comment: Actually it seems that "Vocal Fry Register" has two meanings one using the phonological sense of register which is the same as creaky voice and is used for example in Burmese - and one which uses the sociolinguistic sense of register and is used for example to describe the use of use of vocal fry/creaky voice among some English speakers - perhaps particularly American females. We have to keep the senses apart but also make it possible to find them both for someone searching. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:18, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose As Maunus says, creaky voice is a phonetic concept, needed to disambiguate meaning in some languages. Vocal fry register is a sociolinguistic concept. Saying that "More academic literature uses vocal fry as opposed to creak" is great if you don't care what the articles are actually talking about. 58.8.240.169 (talk) 05:59, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

More Nuanced Discussion of Vocal Creak?

Hey y'all, So I am actually a grad student who does work on this phonation. I'd love to do some work fleshing out the organization of the page adding specific sections on sociolinguistic work on creak and its perceptual effects. Additionally, I'd love to add some sections to flesh out more info on the languages in which creak is a factor in minimal pairing, etc. The page is sorely lacking currently, also since the page is *so* vague/brief it's giving a somewhat incorrect impression concerning creaks' use by young American women. If I see no responses around next 2 weeks or so, I'll start working on incremental changes and additions to add a more nuanced view of the affect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Ling Pixie (talk • contribs) 20:50, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

You don't have to wait two weeks, feel free to be bold. Nardog (talk) 21:10, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Source Issues

I tried outlining the issues with sources 3-7 but they were lost in the edit description unfortunately. I'll reproduce it here:

Statement with poor sources: "Creaky voice is prevalent as a peer-group affectation among young women in the United States."

Sources: 3,4,5,6,7

Summary: None of these sources show that young woman in particular exhibit this style of speech more than other groups, and none for the United States as a whole. There may be better sources that show this point but these are not it. The sample size and locality are the issues with theses sources. Extrapolating 20 woman to the entire country is akin to polling 20 Americans who they'll vote for during their next presidential election and concluding the winner.

Source 3:

This is an opinion article about the dialect of the Pacific Northwest. It cites research done here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247093915_Pacific_northwest_vowels_A_Seattle_neighborhood_dialect_study This research has a sample size of the voices of 8 women and 6 men from one city in Washington state. It is not representative of young American women as a whole.

Source 4:

This link is broken but I suspect that it is meant to be the study I listed above. If you are going to undo my changes, consider replacing this link with the link I provided in the source 3 issue description.

Source 5:

The source says it best on it's own: "It is important to note that because my study examined creaky voice usage and its perception in only two regions, northern California and eastern Iowa, and because my auditory and acoustic analyses were limited to speech samples from only 12 college-age females in California, I was unable to determine its geographic distribution, how it has spread, or whether its usage might vary across regions. "

The people chosen to be recorded were chosen by the authors of the study because they had the California dialect in the author's opinion. This means creaky voice is more of an attribute of what they think the California dialect is.

On the second part of the study: " Although the perception test question did not specify the age of the female speakers, I assume that most respondents answered based on the speech of women close to their own age (20s and 30s) since this is the age group with which they regularly interact. However, their reported perceptions may pertain to creaky voice used by older or even younger women. "

The study does not ask about older vs younger women in terms of creaky voice.

Source 6:

Taken from the abstract of the study: "Subjects were 34 female college students". The conclusion: "Preliminary findings were taken to suggest that use of the vocal fry register may be common in some adult SAE speakers." This does not support the claim that "Creaky voice is prevalent as a peer-group affectation among young women in the United States."

Source 7:

this link is for a recording that is no longer available. I tried to track it down elsewhere but was unable to.

Secondcommand (talk) 04:52, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Be bold. Nardog (talk) 11:00, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Wait, what??

This is an actually existing thing in the IPA?! I thought I just made it up! UltraDestroya48 (talk) 04:08, 22 April 2024 (UTC)