Why Am I Like This?

Tina: I'm so tired.

But I guess I gotta go on this walk for my mental health.

Steph: Hey!

Can you throw that back?

Tina: Steph, is that you?

Steph: Oh Hey!

Thanks, Tina.

What'sare you okay?

Tina: Am I okay?

Are you okay?

Why do you sound like that?!

Steph: Sounds like what??

What do you mean?!

Tina: You sound so big, but you're so little.

Steph: It's because I have a big personality.

Tina: Steph may have a big personality.

But having a big voice is usually correlated with having a big body.

One feature that affects how our voice sounds is the size of our body.

Or more specifically, the size of the biological structures that contribute to the sounds we can produce.

In fact, voice isn't even representative of all the sounds we can make.

There are actually voiced and unvoiced sounds.

For example, clicks, whistles, and whispers.

*clicks* *whistles* [whispers] All of these don't actually use your voice.

They come from other sound producing mechanisms in your body.

So what is voice specifically?

Voice is a sound made by the vocal tract.

This covers everything from talking, singing, to shouting, humming and laughing.

[singing "Is it me you're looking for"] [huming] [laughing] Our vocal tract includes the oral and nasal cavities, the pharynx (or upper throat) and the larynx, which houses our vocal cords.

However, these structures need air to produce sound.

It's when air travels through your larynx that the vocal cords vibrate, and this is what creates the sound of our voice.

And changing these vibrations changes your voice.

Now we can control our pitch to some extent by tightening and loosening the muscles of our larynx, which is what singers do.

But there are limits to how high or low you can go, depending on the structure of our vocal cords.

Longer and thicker vocal cords can generate lower voices, while shorter and thinner vocal cords can create higher voices.

The size of our vocal cords and other structures in our vocal tract is strongly correlated with body size.

Hence, it's so weird to find a tiny person with the vocal qualities of someone twice their size.

So that's why it doesn't make sense.

Steph?

Where did you go?

So weird.

I swear she was right there.

Nee: Water!

Get you some ice cold water!

Tina: Hey, I'll take a water.

Nee: Coming right up.

That'll be $10.

Tina: Nee!

What are you doing here?

Nee: Oh.

Hey, Tina.

You know, $10 is actually a good bargain for some water.

Tina: No, Nee.

What are you doing here?

Why are you selling water?

And why do you have a Scottish accent?

Nee: Tina, I don't know what you're talking about.

Tina: Nee, do you not hear yourself?

Nee: All I hear is you not getting any water.

Tina: Look, I've known Nee for a year now and never has he had a Scottish accent.

So he definitely did not grow up with it.

Maybe he picked it up from watching too much 'Doctor Who,' but is that even possible?

Accents are learned in the same way that we learn languages.

We can define accents as shared characteristics in speech of a particular group.

For those of you who think you don't have an accent, everyone has one.

It's just that our ears aren't very good at hearing our own accents.

So, when is your accent determined?

Every baby is born accentless.

Generally by six months old, babies are already categorizing language sounds based on their native language and accents.

That's before many babies can even speak.

This means that our brains are priming themselves to have an accent ready to go for when we start learning how to talk.

As we age, our way of speaking, including our accent goes on autopilot.

Because of that, we can be less perceptive to sounds that we haven't been exposed to or haven't had to produce.

That's what makes learning new languages so hard.

Sometimes they have sounds that you can't even distinguish, let alone mimic, without a lot of work.

Taken together, it makes sense that accents tend to be shared with the people around us, creating geographic patterns in accents.

Fun fact: some animals have accents.

For example, goats can develop goat accents.

*MEEEEP* which are basically regional differences in the sound of their bleaps.

But going back to our accent mystery a grown person has been speaking a language with a particular accent their entire life is unlikely to emerge from a week long TV binge with a completely different accent.

And anyway, $10 is entirely too much for a bottle of water!

Nee?

Where did he go?

Justin: Hey?

Aren't you that girl I went on that date with?

Tina: Justin.

What are you doing here?

And why are you in character?

Justin: Uh, Wrong guy.

My name's Chadwig.

Tina: Did you forget who you are, Justin?

Justin: I know who I am.

I'm the guy who's playing the guy disguised as the other guy.

Tina: Okay, knock it off.

Justin: Wow.

Thank you.

For I once was a boy, and now I'm a man!

Tina: You sure about that, because you sound prepubescent?

Justin: Thank you for releasing me from the spell of Chadwig!

Tina: So, uh, throughout our lives, our voices do change.

The biggest change that people encounter are typically happens during puberty.

Shifts in our hormonal balance can have a big effect on how we sound.

In particular, the sex hormone testosterone.

Increased testosterone leads to increase bulk in our vocal muscles and ligaments, which makes them thicker and therefore allows them to produce lower sounds.

This thickening is also why many people experience voice cracks when they see a significant increase in testosterone, as happens during puberty for some people.

These changes such as increased vocal fold size are unidirectional, which is one of the reasons that exogenous testosterone can help people lower their voice if that's what they want, but it's not possible to shrink and thin vocal cords by prescribing estrogens, for example.

People are weird, and that's why I don't like talking to them.

But that's why I'm happy to talk to you, Fido.

Fido: Awe, thanks, T!

What?

Am I not allowed to talk because I'm a dog?

Tina: It's not that Fido is not allowed to talk.

It's just that dogs don't have the machinery for it.

And the issue isn't their vocal cords.

It's their brains.

Parrots get to talk because they have the brains for it which is unfair, I agree.

But parrots have brains that allow them to mimic human speech, which is difficult enough on its own.

But it also is a brain that allows them to learn the meaning of particular words, which allows them to speak in a way that makes sense.

It feels surprising, but evolutionary proximity to humans doesn't seem to be a recipe for the ability to speak.

Even our closest evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees don't have the neural control to create human like speech.

So, don't take it personally.

Monkeys and apes have the vocal tracts for speech, it's just their brains aren't wired to use the vocal tracts in the right way.

Wait, why am I even debating science with a dog??!

Where did he go??

This is so weird.

Wake up!

Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, wake *sigh* It was just a dream.

Sound Guy: How's the sound?

Editor: It's a, it's a little quiet.

Sound Guy: Okay.

We'll fix it in season two.

*pterodactyl noise* [whispering: "Hey little mama, let me whisper in your ear"] *enhales* [screams] Tina: knock it off.

I'm so sorry.

Are you ok?

Justin: Nah, nah.

It's fine.

It's fine.

Tina: Nee!

[laughs] Sorry, not Nee.

Wrong guy.

[laughs] Nee: Whassup!

[Justin apologizing profusely, nervously]