Monotonous voice

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Anyone have any good, proven suggestions for overcoming a monotonous voice?
People tend to switch off when listening to me, and hence don't appreciate what I am saying/communicating. It's a huge handicap when you think about it. I've tried many things, but I'm getting no where. When I make a concious effort I often add intonation at inappropriate moments, and this leads to a greater misunderstanding than I'm already used to with AS.

Maybe I should take up an acting course?

Taking up public speaking did wonders for me. Granted, a lot of my expressions and ways of speaking are now identical to those of speakers from competitions I admired a lot, but only people who've seen those speakers in action realise that.

I remember getting a lot of funny looks one time when I was in a competition, and was right after the person that I had decided prior to the competition that I was going to emulate.

Bingo! An acting course is a great idea, not just for your voice, but also for the development of a lot of other nonverbal skills.

Also, you should look into voice coaching.

Wilson acting classes are good; however, don't feel that monotone voice is a complete disadvantage. Sounding too emotional and childish is my disadvantage. I wish I could be a bit more like MR Spock

i get told alot that i am monotonous and i mumble
which annous me because i dont think i am / realise that i do it.. then i cannot tell if people of getting bored listening to me.

Hi

In order I did

speach pathology -- excellent the experts tell you how to distinguish between a sarcastic comment, a question, an order etc and give one basic examples (like song melody's) to mimic when talking.

Online facial and tonal software

Dale Carrnige speech training

Acting class

Yeh, acting courses.
I once did afterschool drama, now I can lie.
Not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing but......there you go.

Sing along with music. Music changes pitch, and you will learn to vary your voice's pitch while singing. It will translate back into talking

This post reminds me of speech and language class.

Listen to English courses made for non-native speakers, especially those made for people who have tonal native languages like Chinese. They will often give great examples of the kinds of inflections and tones that sound natural.

Uh-huh, same here. I also get told I talk too fast.

Normal inflection sometimes sounds exaggerated to me, and exaggerated inflection sounds positively ludicrous. A while back I took the AP French Language test and all the speakers on the cassette used for the Listening section spoke with aggressive correctness of pronunciation and deliberately exaggerated inflection. It sounded ridiculous.

I love my monotonous voice, especially when I give powerpoint presentations.

I love to be boring, and droning is a hobby for me

I used to have a rather monotonous voice as well; I still do, when I "lecture" (either officially, or when I get started on one of my obsessions). However, after I got the habit of listening to books on tape, I began to use the same inflections and expression I heard in the narrators' voices. My speech today is formal; but it has the right inflections in it, and is understandable. I have also recently begun copying colloquial speech, with moderate success.

The key here is to learn the rules of the tone and speed of speech, and to follow them; some languages use tone and speed as part of the words themselves (tonal languages, ex. Chinese), and Aspies in those countries must learn to speak just as we do in our non-tonal languages. I think acting or speech classes might also help.

I would think of inflection in speech as having the same function as punctuation in writing. When you ask a question, your pitch goes up at the question mark. When you recite a list, you pause at commas. When you say something important or exciting, your voice becomes slightly louder and higher pitched, as with an exclamation point. At the end of a sentence, your pitch goes down where you would put a period. Think of it as "verbal punctuation"--and imagine how tough it would be to understand a book without punctuation marks!

You may never have perfect inflection--I don't, but then I'm only 23 and have more to learn--but you will be more understandable. Learning inflection is a worthwhile effort.

[EDIT: Oh, I forgot--Also a part of inflection are the stressed and unstressed syllables of words. You will see these marked in dictionaries with apostrophe-like symbols or boldface type; they are rather subtle when spoken and must not be over-done, but their presence is essential to proper pronunciation of words.]

I worked on my speech in my very late teens by copying TV or radio talk (when they tell stories on the radio) Also, I would read a book out loud by myself and try to use tone when reading.

Speech pathology sounds like a good start. At least it would be in front of only one person.

Acting sounds good too. I thought of it, but I'm too afraid of trying in front of so many people.

Good luck!

Sure, that's a good idea. I've taken a lot of acting classes (I studied theatre in college) but even though I learned to be expressive on stage, I'm still monotonous in real life. I can act excited for about 30 minutes in "real life", then I get tired. Whether you can incorporate it into daily life or not, you'll probably find it interesting...

I don't see it as monotonous, i see it as an emotionless voice, which pleases me to no end!