Name: What Is Vocal Fry & Is It Bad For You?
Uploaded: 2017-08-15T11:32:49.000Z
Duration: 4 min 15 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Vocal fry is the lowest of the four registers
of the human voice.

Our voice is made by air passing through a
set of soft flaps in our voicebox; or larynx.

As we breathe, air moves past these flaps
and they can vibrate from 100 to 1000 times

Like a brass instrument's mouthpiece, vocal
chords alone create a buzzing sound, but if

you put a resonator above it, like a horn,
you can affect a sound! [[play]] As we learn

to control the vibration, we use the throat,
mouth, and nasal cavity as our resonator.

Our vocal chords can make four registers:
the lowest is fry, then modal, falsetto, and

Most people will speak and sing in the modal
range, and if you listen, you can tell when

people switch registers especially as they’re
singing.

As you speak, the chords are vibrating smoothly,
but fry slams them shut, allowing only bubbles

of air to break through -- which is why it
sounds like popping.

In 2012, the Journal of Voice released a study
exploring how young women aged 18-25 were

speaking in the lowest register, for some
reason!

Essentially, while talking would slip into
the vocal fry register -- again, something

rarely done in recent generational memory.

In 1972, a study in the Journal of Speech
and Hearing Disorders explored judgements

of voice quality in both men and women and
found 5 to 10 percent of people had quote

"some type of… pathology that produced a
deviant voice quality."

Speaking outside the modal range is considered
a deviance, so from this result we know people

were definitely using it in the late-20th
century.

In the 90s, men and women who were in their
40s used it during a study for the Acoustical

And today, in an disappointingly tiny study
from Long Island University, found two-thirds

In the past both men and women have used deep
voices to convey authority of gravitas, and

looking at the CEOs of 800 public companies,
scientists found deeper voices made more money.

In fact, according to their study, as pitch
of the voice decreased, the CEO’s salary

increased and deeper voices infer longer tenure
too.

Plus, a 2013 PLOS ONE study found women associate
sexual attractiveness with deeper, breathier

male voices but men, on the other hand, looked
for higher pitched voices in their heteronormative

Deeper voices meant larger bodies which then
equated to more power.

Regardless, this affectation or tic, is gaining
popularity, especially with women, though

I really want to stress the point that men
do it too -- women are just getting crap for

Researchers can only guess why it's gaining
popularity in women, though there are hypotheses.

Perhaps, the use of the vocal fry is to mimic
that "power" or "male attractiveness?"

Or, just as likely, it's something completely
different!

We know we're doing it more, and we know that
some people don't like that.

A 2014 PlosONE study found people over 40
think females using vocal fry sound like they

"lack authority" but those UNDER 40 don't
care one bit.

So, know your audience, but speak like you
want!

In the end, it's not physically harmful according
to vocal coach Ken Taylor, and as long as

you're not using it constantly or yelling
while doing vocal fry, you shouldn't see any

Noam Chomsky's voice has vocal fry, and so
does the former head of the New York Times

Jill Abramson it all the time, I don't see
anyone giving him crap about it.

If you weren't sure before, you'll probably
hear it all the time now.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

What Is Vocal Fry & Is It Bad For You?

constantly

essentially

associate

crap