High Pitched Female Voices and Japanese
 

I suppose the language board is as good a place as any to ask this.

I've never thought to ask why so many Japanese women (see the lead actress in 誰も知らない, or YUKI) affect high voices, but my wife recently asked again, so I decided to ask where I thought people might know and be honest.

I don't want some third-rate hypothesis by a Japanese major, either: I can come up with simple hypotheses like "oh, cuz of kawaii culture" or "Japanese men are pedophiles," but those are neither satisfying explanations nor trustworthy in and of themselves.

I want to know a real answer, not come up with guesses myself that just sound right.

I figure there's some sort of studies that have actually been done on this. I googled, but only found guys asking the same question as me and joking about anime and crap like that.

In any case, I hope this is language-related enough to stay on this board.

What is the question?

Well, why do so many English speaking women do impersonation of John Wayne? jk.

Are you sure Japanese girls are speaking with "high voice"?

YouTube - Avril Lavigne Proactiv Commercial
YouTube - プロアクティブボディCM 出演：小倉優子_60秒

For instance, these 2 girls in very similar settings are speaking at about the same pitch.

Hehe, sorry: Why do so many Japanese women (see the lead actress in 誰も知らない, or YUKI) affect high voices?

Edit: By "women" I really mean "female entertainers."

Absolutely. Maybe just on TV—although I did know one in real life who talked like I see actresses and such on TV do, but she was about three feet tall, so it's understandable—but absolutely yes, I am sure of it.

Are you tone deaf?

And before someone suggests that it's genetics, just watch a Kurosawa film and listen to the women speak. You never hear one who sounds like the lead actress in 誰も知らない or innumerable singers and actresses. It's obviously an affectation, not the natural pitch of their voices.

japanese girl high voice - Google Search

You'll find a lot of pages asking the same question as me, so it's not a hallucination of mine. Nearly all my family has asked at one point or another. My wife (who is ethnically Asian and from South America) has also noticed this and asked. I think her mom and sister have asked as well.

I'd finally like to be able to give an answer better than "I dunno, to sound cute."

And no, I'm not referring to anime VAs.

No, I am not tone deaf. I don't have my guitar around me right now and I don't have the absolute pitch so I can't tell you exactly what note they are using but Avril can actually be using higher pitch here and there.

Every Japanese phoneme has a vowel and it is a pitch accented language so you'll hear voiced phoneme at relatively consistent pitch almost all the time, while in English, there are a lot less vowels in a sentence and they are pronounced with a more explosive way so they die out quickly. That and the girly accent (going up at the end of a sentence) are probably fooling your brains.

Exactly what part of that video do you find the girl is "affecting high voice"?

P.S.
And who is the lead actress in 誰も知らない? is it "YOU"?

Whoever the mom is. My wife was streaming it earlier; I wasn't really watching it.

And I speak English natively and Japanese pretty well; I assure you my brain is not being fooled.

It's actually absolutely unfathomable to me that someone would deny this phenomenon exists!

And yes, Avril's voice does go higher occasionally when English prosody demands it. But Japanese prosody does not demand a consistently high voice, as regular Japanese girl speech patterns demonstrate. And my conception of "regular Japanese girl" is basically 99% of females I attended university with in Tokyo.

Edit Another example: YouTube - MHFシーズン5.0×ファミ通TV 特番　#1

You can't tell me that's natural.

Edit 2 Apparently academics are researching this topic, so again, I'm not inventing things out of thin air: Japanese language, gender, and ... - Google Books

Edit 3 More research being done: http://global.factiva.com/aa/default.aspx?pp=Print 1 of 2

Disclaiming heavily as being a) not Japanese and, b) bearing no proof of anything really, feel free to cherry pick or dismiss from the following as you see fit:
I am a psych grad. though, and I have looked into this kind of thing a little.

1) There are some physiological characteristics at play, i'm sure, in that japanese women generally have slightly lighter voices. An affected voice acts like a hyperbole for femininity. It makes a caricature of 'girl', sometimes for comedic effect, or chiaroscuro-like affect- female villains with sweet voices and evil intentions.

2) Strong social links with higher voices and femininity. Definitely there's evidence that female fluent native-english speakers of Japanese raise their pitch when they swap to Japanese, which male speakers don't do; they remain constant across languages. There's also the phenomenon where female learners of Japanese frequently resist pitch-raising or certain syntax when they start out because they are aware it makes them sound overtly feminine and it doesn't gel with their perceptions of femininity or womanliness. Leading to-

3) The flipside. Male voices in Asia on the whole are slightly less deeply pitched than westerners. Of course you get a proportion of bass voices, but in the media it's got social overtones of samurai and yakuza stereotypes. You don't get a bishounen prince who sounds like Lois Armstrong any more than you'd have a shogun who sounded like Tiny Tim. So if the male role opposite the female role is speaking with only a mid-range pitched voice, the woman needs to raise her pitch in order to maintain a distinct gender gap in terms of the audio. In fact, i'm sure I've seen a couple of samurai flicks where the male lead DID have a deep gravelly voice, and the love interest, rather than pitching her voice up, created contrast by softening her tone instead.

4) Role. Mature or 'cold' women in Japanese dramas don't tend to have squeaky voices. In 君はペットthey even make a point of this; the woman speaks quite normally, the villainess has the affected 'little voice' and as a consequence the protagonist gets told she isn't cute. Outside of drama; if you look at female news-desk readers in Japan they rarely affect a voice, sticking with the Japanese equivalent of a BBC tone throughout, even if what they're saying is relatively bland compared to their male counterparts. This could be for several obvious reasons; they're working with serious subject matter, so a high voice would be inappropriate, they're also acting from a position of authority, to which people most naturally react better if the voice is a mature voice, and thus deeper than normal. The girls they send out to talk to Mr. Tanaka and his hot air ballooning monkey tend to be more chirpy and lighter pitched.

5) What we can perhaps infer from this is that in roles where the individual characteristics of the speaker take a back-seat, including gender in this case, then the hyperbole of an affected voice isn't needed. On the flip-side, in scenarios where the characteristics of the speaker need to be fore-front, a 'voice' can exaggerate them, in the case of a high voice, it exaggerates certain aspects of femininity. It works both ways too, certain male roles often encourage an affectedly lower voice. The contrast is, where lowering of a male voice for affect isn't limited to non-western media (Batman), raising of a female voice to a degree IS. It must be, or else no one would bother to comment on it.

6) Halo Effect. The angelic sort of halo, not the other sort. It's generally accepted that beautiful people are more likely to be attributed with positive characteristics at first impression than ugly people. Similarly, a woman with a higher/lighter voice is given the same deal in Japan. And this I ~have~ read about. A study by Ohara (1996?) found that a higher pitched voice (without any image) was more likely to be attributed as cute, kind, gentle, polite, beautiful, would easily marry and young. Lower voices in contrast were more likely to be attributed as stubborn, selfish, strong, would become spinsters and straight-forward. Ouch. So there's really a big advantage for a girl in the public eye to hype up her dolly voice as depressingly, there was no difference between male and female perceptions in the study; another woman was just as likely to make those negative assumptions as a man.

7) Women's Lib. I hate to drag this into this, but in Japan, it's possible that there is no gain for a woman to lower her pitch, whereas in the West, women have deliberately dropped their tones to compete with men. Maggie Thatcher is a prime example; follow her career from start (pre PM) to finish and you'll see her tone drops by about an octave. She was explicitly coached to do so. So it could well be that Women in the west have normatively lower voices than we used to and you're so used to it that Japanese women seem shrill in comparison. A low woman's voice is also rather sexual, plenty of pop-stars in the west put on a sexy husky don't-care voice because it sells, but in Japan, perhaps that makes you seem too easy or used goods, seeing as 'innocence' is a much bigger seller.

8) Not so much Kawaii as Genki? No one likes a mopey actress; when you are cheerful you naturally lift your voice up, speak higher and more lightly. Perhaps a cheap and easy way to stay seeming genki is just to speak squeak.

9) It's super Japanese. Again looking at foreign female learners of Japanese, you often get amongst the very japanophile types the "gaspy little voicers". Loathed by other foreign women, they affect this voice to sound cute and most importantly, 'japanesey'. They go so far as to take it into English as well, complete with gestures and so forth, because women with high voices are part of the perception of Japan. Conversely, there's often nothing as 'foreign' as a woman with a low-rough voice. It's bold and aggressive and I can tell you, you can make pushy blokes scarper very quickly simply by dropping out of 'cute' pitching It's something of a trend too, perhaps. One famous high-pitcher begats another, and another, and another...

Thanks for not denying this phenomenon exists.

Fascinating. I look forward to getting some natives' opinions, too. Maybe I'll go to 2chan and post in Japanese.

Though I suspect I'll get more of a "「女の子」ってなんだっけ?!" response there.

OK. It's her.
YouTube - (Nike×YOU) 居てない居てない YOU! 居てたーん
Again, she's nothing higher than, say, Paris Hilton, pitch wise. Do you find her voice high in this video also?

Well if 99% of females in Tokyo don't affect high voice, maybe they want some exaggerated characters on TV? 小倉優子 is using the girly accent for sure but physically, her pitch isn't that high.

Dude, that's THE famous Anime voice actress who is known for her supersonic voice. You can't get more Anime than that.


edit: I'm not "denying" the "phenomenon" exists, I'm just saying it's probably not the pitch itself, but rather their accent. Drawling the end of a sentence and rising its pitch high is a signature of Tokyo young girl accent. Notice 小倉優子 is doing it in pretty much all of the sentences? This doesn't make you look very smart and is rather girly so guys don't do it very much but rising of the pitch at the end of a sentence itself is one legitimate way of emphasizing.

OK, I don't know if it's been said or not, but in my experience the high pitched voice is directly linked to the level of politeness.

The higher the pitch, the more polite. Incidentally, this is also quite true for males. Although males aren't expected to go as high as women, which is a gender role thing as much as a physiological thing I'm sure.

At any rate, if you go shopping in Japan, you will notice that the clerks will use a higher pitched voice than your Japanese friends (who you may be with when you're shopping). If you are in the office, you might notice someone picking up the phone raising the pitch of their voice like a whole fifth out of nowhere. I think it's just another layer of showing status.

My wife, who sells makeup, said that to her using a high pitch is to basically brighten things up. Using a low pitched voice would be too dark, and might hurt sales (haha). She also said, which I'm suprised she was aware of, that when talking to customers it is common practice to raise the pitch of the end of your sentence even higher.

I've raid about it in books... but I apologize as I don't quite remember which one I've raid it in.

EDIT: my explination is to explain a high pitched voice in everyday speech. I'm not trying to explain why women on video game shows or anime speak with such a high pitched voice. In the comments of that Famitsu video, the one and only comment basically says "wow what a high voice".

This would be a guess, but I imagine that they would use a high voice on shows like that to "brighten" them up, similar to what my wife was saying.

Are you suggesting that in the US it is as prevalent to raise your voice intentionally and hold it there constantly? I think you're using one definition of "pitch" and I'm using another. It's probably where the confusion is.

Oh, and you think her voice is the same pitch as this: YouTube - The Late Show With David Letterman - Paris Hilton Interview

I asked two other people here: they disagree with you, as do I.

And honestly, it really does seem like you're trying to argue that this phenomenon does not exist, or at least is exactly the same in the US. Every time I point out someone, you tell me someone in the US who does this, too. But it is absolutely not the case, and I say this as someone who has lived in Japan and the US, that this raising of the voice (or some sort of vocal calisthenics I don't have jargon for) is as widespread in the US.

Maybe I'll stop using the word "pitch" here to end confusion. There is some additional pitch/nasal/something quality to these TV personalities' voices in Japan. I don't know a proper linguistic term for it, but it's there. When I try to imitate it, I think my soft palette raises up, my vocal cords tighten, I take on more of a head voice than chest voice, and my tongue lowers abnormally in my mouth. But this is just a guess, since I'm in a library and can't exactly attempt to imitate it right now.


OK, let's table the "pitch" thing. You and I seem to be on the page that there is some sort of intentional affectation here.

That's irrelevant. Are you saying it's natural, or she does it intentionally? If she does it intentionally, that cuts right to the heart of my question: why?

OK, I think we are on the same page.

Well, maybe not. I am decidedly not talking about a rising intonation at the end of sentences.

What are your qualifications? Are you a native speaker? Live in Japan for a while?

I think there's some miscommunication going on here, because everyone else seems to be talking about the same thing as I, while you keep talking about something else. I am likely not adequately explaining the issue in a way that everyone can understand it.

This is helpful. Thanks, Steve. IIRC, you live in Japan and have a Japanese wife, right?

And I'm not talking about anime girls, so don't worry about that. Basically, I'm talking about the widespread phenomenon of タレント doing some weird thing with their voices. Maybe "pitch" is not the right word, but there's some pitch/nasal/something change that happens, and a lot more women do it on TV in Japan than in the US.

Here is my answer. I`ve lived in Japan for over 10 years, and went to an all girls high school here. Whether that is good enough for you, I have no idea.

I think that in order to answer this, you have to look at not just higher pitches but also lower. Let`s say we have 3 general pitches - normal, low, and high.

Normal is neutral - the natural voice pitch. It carries no "meaning". People COULD use their normal pitch... However -
Low is a "private" and often looked at as "seductive" voice.
High is happy and energetic.

Better to err on the side of caution and sound more happy and energetic than seductive, right? So the tone goes up. This is true for both women and men, but women are more critical of the lower tone.

Among Japanese women, the higher pitch is a demonstration of innocence. You won`t see anyone actually saying that the pitch is representing that, but if you ask what a lower pitch voice in a woman means they will have no trouble telling you that it sounds "naughty" in a sexual way, or like a seductress.

The thing is, no one thinks consciously about this. It isn`t as if girls go around thinking "I need to sound innocent!". It`s more that girls are supposed to be innocent - no one wants to seem the opposite - so it becomes a natural part of life. The raised pitch is normal - a natural or lowered pitch is NOT.

Speaking in a high pitch to someone`s boyfriend or husband is normal - but if you were to drop your voice it becomes "private". Sort of a way of letting down your guard.

With men, the lower voice is usually looked at as "sexy" - which doesn`t carry the negative connotations of "seductive". But still, in polite situations and the like it is better to err on the "happy" side, so men will raise their pitch.

A lot of entertainers will overdo it because of the connotations of "happy" and "energetic" that come with a higher pitched voice. Pitch naturally rises when you are excited - as an entertainer it`s better to sound like you`re excited about what you`re doing than not.

I think Nyororin's explanation is good. It seems to match up with the gyst of what my wife was talking about. And actually, talking about 3 levels of pitch is something I think I've read about before. I never heard of the lower pitched voice being "seductive/sexy" for women, but thinking back on experience that sounds quite right. I've noticed that when I see women at a bar/izakaya/restaurant for like a girls night out, they always seem to have a lower pitched voice than usual (that's not to say it's like purposefully or uncomfortably low). So what Nyororin said about it being a sign of having let your guard down, that also seems right.

As far as "タレント" go, I don't watch TV too much so I really can't say. It's not something I'm completely unaware of, but it's not something I'm familiar enough with to talk about.

I still think that there is a level of "politeness" about it, though... although that might be harder to explain and justify.

In America, I'm sure it exists just like it does in Japan. It's just not on a comparable level in my opinion. To write it off entirely might be a mistake because there may very well be similar things about them although I haven't really thought about it before.

KyleGoets,

There are different factors to your question. I'll talk about sociological factors if need be, but first let's get this "pitch thing" straight. And oh, I'm a native Japanese speaker, born and bred in greater Tokyo area. Don't know if that qualifies me for anything though.

I used the word "pitch" literally. The frequency with which the air vibrates. And while I don't deny ゆう sounds higher, the pitch of her voice is actually lower than Paris Hilton's, at least in these 2 videos. In the first 15 seconds of the ゆう's interview, the highest note, に in ２食, is a tone called B2, and the lowest point, く in ２食 is B1, both of them can easily be pronounced by any male. Paris is about 3 piano keys higher, for example "good" and "thank you" are around F#3 at the highest point and F#2 at the lower part. F#3 is kind of high for a guy.

The reason ゆう "sounds" higher is because the texture of her voice is more falsetto, and Paris' more hardy. This is due to the nature of both languages. In Japanese, you need to constantly and continuously pronounce voiced phonemes, and your vocal cords aren't contracting very hard, resulting in clearer, but weaker voice. In English, you need to pronounce the stressed vowel, and only that vowel, very hard and clear, and this gives you a bit of "growl" to your voice, kind of like a rock singer. It also goes really low before a voiced sound dies out for a fraction of time, making it sound deeper.

So first of all, Japanese girls "sound" higher if they speak at the same pitch as English speakers do.

And secondly, Japanese is a pitch accented language, which means you can't arbitrary change the pitch like you can in English. American people actually do raise their pitch if they are, say, talking to a customer or being excited. But they only do so at the stressed vowel. Like if you say "Good morning", it's either "Goo" is high and the rest is low, or "mor" is high and the rest is low. But in Japanese, if you want to raise the pitch of "おはようございます" it HAS TO go up at "は" and it HAS TO stay at that exact pitch until you finish saying す. Try this yourself and say "Good morning!" cheerfully as if you are talking to a customer, and try saying "おはようございます" using the same lowest and highest pitch. It will sound strange in Japanese, and it'll be kind of like shouting. So you tend to rise the pitch of the whole sentence a bit in Japanese instead of going very high at the stressed vowel like you do in English. You are going higher in both languages but in different ways.

Now, I'm not saying there isn't any social factors or gender factors or whatever, there are. But you and your friends perceive what is physically lower frequency voice as "high voice", so I just thought this is something you want to take note.


And thank you Nyororin for divulging the girls' secret :) That definitely is an important insight.

I think it should be noted that intonation varies depending on the region in Japan, but either way the intonation of words is pretty solid (as in extremely important for words and phrases to be understood). English is very much the same way though (with emphasis on stress as well as pitch).

Cranks, you make a good point. The tonal quality of the voice is a huge part of what we're talking about. The pitch definitely changes, but so does the quality of the voice.

People are often fooled by this phenomenon. There are many types of singing voices and colors that can be added. You might've heard the terms, head, mixed, falsetto, chest, etc - voice. That's what we're talking about. Listen to someone like Michael Jackson. It's without a doubt that he was able to hit really high notes, but even when he hit notes that were low he had a very feminine and light quality to his voice. This is because he doesn't usually use his chest voice. He's using a lot of his nasal cavity for resonance and mixing his head and falsetto voice (from what I can tell anyways). Now contrast that with someone like Michael McDonald. They have the same first name, but they have completely different singing voices. When Michael McDonald sings lead, he has a very dark quality to his voice, even when he hits the high notes. This makes his singing voice sound lower than it is. I'm sure the beard helps, too. At any rate, if you hear him sing background vocals on Steely Dan records or Donald Fagen solo works, you will notice that he sometimes doesn't always have that dark quality. Particularly if you listen to the song Peg by Steely Dan, you will hear Michael McDonald hitting notes that women would struggle with... and the quality of his voice is distinctly him, but not quite his usual dark tone. He would probably be like a Baritone based on his voice quality alone... since he hits those high notes he's probably more like a Baritenor or somet hyrbrid thing like that.

As a side note, I grew up basically tone deaf. I really started liking music, as in wanting to get involved in it, in my later days of high school... taking singing lessons during college was a revelation to my singing/pitch recognition as much as it was to my Japanese learning. For anyone trying to learn how to speak a second language or improve their speaking in their mother language, definitely consider joining a chorus or taking singing lessons.

Thanks to all. And welcome to the site, cranks!

That's right. intonation varies depending on the dialect, and I was only talking about Tokyo accent or 標準語 with the おはようございます example. My point I guess is that in Japanese, in any dialect AFAIK, once the pitch goes up, you can not go down until you reach the accented phoneme so you will be talking at the higher pitch for a while, while in English, you go up at the stressed syllable for like 0.1 second and immediately go down to the base pitch.

The elevation of the pitch happens in English too, I don't see many English speakers on TV who speak only with low voice, except may be Larry King :P Most of the people employ high voice here and there, but it immediately goes right back down so they don't sound like they are speaking with high voice. In Japanese though, even a lot of men do sound like they are speaking with high voice like these people.

YouTube - ジャパネットたかた　夢のコラボ映像　二代目はこの人 しかいない！！
YouTube - 今田東野ナイナイの芸能界ダメならぬがねば!![1994]

Now, there definitely some girls who want to look Kawaii too, but I also hear stories about girls who deliberately talk lower so they don't sound like they are affecting high voice. Anime voice is generally not an attraction even in Japan.

アニメ声　悩み　女 - Google Search

So, why do Japanese girls affect high voice? Probably the same reason American people speak more dynamically when they are on TV or in a formal setting. But the tonal quality of their voice makes it sound higher, and also the pitch accent nature of Japanese language dictates higher pitch to be held longer than English.

Thanks for the welcome Kyle, I actually found and read through several papers but unfortunately none of them had conducted a study that reliably displays that Japanese girls employ significantly higher voice in a social situations compared with men and women with other nationalities. The number of participants are usually very small, one of the more referenced papers only studied 10 people with 2 Japanese females, and there isn't any decent comparison to men and other nationalities, so this is the least third-rate hypothesis-ish I can be. Here are some of the better papers I found if you are interested.

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http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/al.../yuasa1998.pdf

Much of what has been explained here is something I seemed to have understood instinctively, but it was not until the mention of singing "voices" or methods that another couple of aspects to this occurred to me.

When Japanese women speak they are not only raising the pitch, they very carefully controlling the force of their speech, or projection. They strive for softness even more than pitch modulation from what I have encountered (mostly formal exchanges). But a by product of pitch modulation is that same variance of force. One's loudness increases naturally as the pitch is lowered. I can't explain it, but since I sang soprano, alto and even baritone in college choir I had to fight that tendency. When you soften your projection, the tendency is for the range of pitch to rise, so it makes sense that native speakers of Japanese tend to have higher pitched speech.

The other part was a memory that the discussion of higher pitch in speech is conveying innocence tirggered. Everyone is very aware that the male vocal register drops at puberty. So do female voices sometimes. When it does, it is usually less pronounced, but compare the normal voice of a 8 yr old girl with that of maybe an older sister of about 16. The range gap is often significant. I think an unconcious awareness of this may contribute to the perception of a higher voice being more innocent.

I have to say, I use a higher pitched voice when talking to customers. I actually think this is normal for females in general - I hear other people doing the same at work. I haven't really thought about it until now. I also do it on the phone, not for clarity but for some reason it seems to highlight... politeness?

But yes, it does seem Japanese women do it a lot more often. I think what Nyororin described seems pretty accurate in regards to most women.