Post #3876286

2026-07-16 21:38 UTC

Trans talk. A very dear friend just gave me a flash of insight she'd had into why my "native accent" (North London UK working class) is so clearly masc-coded, such that when I return to the UK, and it makes its inevitable appearance, I get misgendered constantly. To my face, even. On the phone, forget about it. The only difference I've ever been able to discern and track was word-choice. UK English uses many endearments for people, and the ones I used were masc-coded. That one was easy. But it didn't change the situation. So I went on, and spent time thinking about it sometimes, but I ran into a problem. That being the language I learned first, from birth to 9.5 years old, *it is what sounds like "natural English speech" to me*. So when I hear someone speaking with that London style (won't say Cockney; my dad was Cockney, but I am not), I hear it as just...that's how people talk. Which makes it very, very hard for me to step outside that frame of reference, and examine the elements of their language from a linguistic perspective. The variations that determine this kind of gender-coding were not something I was able to pick up on, as my brain filtered out those variations automatically, because, "normal speech". So my friend said to me today that she had listened to a small sample I gave of my native accent. A group of friends were showing off their production of RP by making short recordings and posting them. I listened to them all, and sent my own, saying, "Cor, you lot dun 'alf sahnd posh!" ("Goodness me, you gentlefolk do really sound thoroughly refined!"). She popped up in DMs, and asked if she could give me something she'd noticed right away. I begged her to. I really want to make this change. She referred to pitch variation, a common pattern in English where femme-coded speech has a much larger pitch variation than masc-coded speech. She noted that my variation was, as most London masc were, very flat. But the women...not so much. Opposite. 1/2

Replies (3)

@muddle@infosec.exchange 2026-07-17 04:32

@oldladyplays@wargamers.social Maybe stick a "lah-di-dah but" in front of "you don't half sound posh?" (In my head it sounds Australian, but I get the idea of greater pitch variation)

Open ##3876284
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social 2026-07-16 22:00

2/2 Trans talk (cont.) Anyway, I was very excited. I know how to do more pitch variation. That's very much in my mimicry repertoire. So all I need to do is figure out the femme-coded pitch variation pattern for London English, and move mine to be closer to it. As my friend put it, "I was thinking that (London) takes that to absolute extremes. Like, it is almost impossible to overegg it." That's the difference. My particular accent happens to be one where the largest gender distinction in speech pattern is entirely pitch variation variation. Pitch variation squared? Not sure how this works. Basically, the amount of variation from the baseline is the marker. More masc, less variation. More femme, more variation. Be distinctively one or the other. I can do that. Gimme six months, and we'll see where I am on femme-voice Londonerinisch. It got me thinking, though. I wonder what the markers are like in the other languages I speak? Not the very clear ones, like using the right form of a noun ("traductrice" v "traducteur"), DE use of -in to indicate femme-coding, Slavic verb endings. I mean the unwritten ones. Not the content of speech, but the manner. What is it, in your language, that tells you what gender to refer to your interlocutor as? And yes, I'm aware, gender is not transmissible by phone line as such, I'm a good trans, I know my theory. But what are the signals that make you feel like "this is a man speaking" or "this is a woman speaking", in French, or German, or Spanish, or Russian? Not the obvious stuff, like Russian past tense verbs, but the...suprasegmentals, I guess. The stuff outside of the bricks and mortar of linguistics. Do French men swear more often? Do German women speak more indirectly? Do Spanish men have a notable speech difference from Spanish women? Do Russian women speak more quickly)? I'm interested in hearing from anyone about their language's answers. Responses in :flag-fr: :flag-de: :flag-es: :flag-ru: all okay.

Open ##4081895
@rgs@piaille.fr 2026-07-17 04:30

@oldladyplays@wargamers.social Dutch is currently undergoing a vowel shift (like the one that has occurred in English centuries ago) and it’s more marked in women’s speech for fascinating sociolinguistic reasons. See for example https://www.researchgate.net/publication/28638463_The_pronunciation_of_ei_by_male_and_female_speakers_of_avant-garde_Dutch

Open ##4329408