Your speaking voice

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I've always spoken with a Cockney accent, so I guess that my speaking voice would go under nasal and refined, but with a vowel shift thrown in. I don't have a problem with that. My family used to have a problem with it. My parents got their wake-up call in the November of 1987, after telling me not to talk through my nose that entire summer, after my family doctor looked down my throat. It's turned out that my soft and hard palate are formed differently than those of most people. I'm very proud of my life long accent. It sets me apart from what society wants most North Americans to act and sound like.

Thank you to all the people who posted here. This is really interesting helpful stuff. Thanks furthermore to millie, you said a lot of important things and made many good points...

I can identify with a number of the things you mentioned, including the idea of social echolalia, the bit about the telephone, and having a basic, low, flat regular voice. I agree with your theory about heightened sensory perceptions being at the root of this phenomenon. If we are aware (often to the exclusion of other things like social cues) of tiny subtleties and patterns in speech, we can break it down into workable parts and reproduce it with some accuracy...

This is a great thread, and thanks to all of you again for so many insightful responses.

Now I myself have a deep baritone voice. It can be quite powerful and expressive, but it takes a good deal of effort to get it there. Ordinarily, I rather soft spoken (which is always kind of strange coming from a large man such that I am), and tend to hesitate and/or stutter slightly when speaking to unfamiliar people. My voice stays flat monotone unless I purposefully try to make it otherwise, and even then it can sound fake and forced. And the things I talk about... practically the working definitions of pedantic and overly verbose. Especially when I talk about my interests, I take the conversation way over other peoples' heads, and and up killing it.

I had a English teacher in high school say once that I had a great voice for radio. I took this as a high compliment, as I was at least marginally aware at that time of the control and diversity I can achieve with my voice... which is something that comes at the expense of always seeming genuine or "being myself", which has always been a common social impediment.

this is just so interesting

thanks acacia. iti s interesting. And nice to hear you could relate. I wonder if there is a relationship between the sensory integration issues or heightened sensory issues and the mimicry. it would be interesting if someone did a study.

for example - Do AS people WITHOUT sensory integration issues also have the capacity for complex mimicry??? Or is it specific to AS people WITH the Sensory integration issues. i am aware that not all people with AS have sensory processing difficulties and variations.

when i mimic - it is as if i can get inside the original speaker i am mimicking - as if i can get right into their pronunciations and their mannerisms. i feel like i am in their being. If use in a sense with my experience of them and it is all encompassing. very strange and all linked in with the sensory issues i have. I do not have any idea how i do it - and if i try too hard i cannot do it. I need to feel my way into it in a sesne - as if it is all based on the sensory realm and bypasses normal processing.

HOwever i do refrain from too much mimicry as my son says it is rude. Recently i had a pencahnt for mimicking the high pitched voice of one of his young friends. i was asked to stop it by my son - who said it was not ok. (i didn't do it when the boy was around. all the same i took the suggestion on and i refrained. i miss doing it though. it soothes too.)

Some people tell me I talk like a robot. It's probably the combination of my teenage voice and the monotonicity of my speech.

On a side note: I had no idea that monotonicity was a real word until Firefox's spell check didn't bother me about it just now, lol.

when I am socially anxious my voice wavers so it sounds like I am going to cry when I am not.

Thats really interesting. I've heard of that before and would like to understand it more.

Well, I actually got used to pronouncing german words, including town names, with a german accent, and danish ones with a danish accent. *I* think my german accent is pretty good, but almost everyone(that I spoke with in denmark) has complimented my danish accent. That included travel agents, bank clerks, etc.... People that didn't know me and had no reason to lie. My uncle, who is FLUENT in danish, told me not to speak danish to danish customs, because he said they would not believe I was an american! That was a nice compliment!

I've always been a good mimic and, especially when I was younger, would quickly adopt the accent and style of speech of those around me. I try to maintain my "normal" speech patterns now but it is a challenge.

When I was younger I used to mimic comedians, singers or just people I thought had a funny voice. People said I was always spot on. I still do it and get a laugh every time.
I can take on the intonation of actors or just people I hang around with a lot.
Other times I have a monotonous voice and people don't know when I'm being sarcastic or not.