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In 1990, I went on an exchange to the Virginia Polytechnic and State University with Leïla. It was an interesting semester. I like teaching, and it is always challenging to be doing it in a new cultural environment. The students enjoyed my accent, which is more or less what used to be called ‘BBC English’. I liked theirs as well. There is sometimes a musicality in American ways of speaking English which is not always present in the regional varieties in the British Isles, though I did not take to the more nasal varieties of American English.
It is curious to wonder how voice production is actually learned or picked up in early childhood. For instance, people from the Indian sub-continent who have migrated to other parts of the world will often retain a particular and characteristic timbre and register of speech for more than one generation.
I read in 2004 of a French businessman who wanted to learn better English because of the demands of his work. He made a considerable effort, but with very small success. He went to his doctor who referred him for tests on his hearing. It turned out that his effective hearing range in terms of sound frequencies was quite limited. Then he recruited some French University researchers, who found that average French speech uses a surprisingly limited frequency range, while average English speech uses much more, especially in higher frequencies. There was also considerable variation in other languages they investigated. They have created some software to train people’s ears when they want to learn another language. It is hard to use or make a sound-difference which you cannot hear. And it can be hard to learn to hear it in the first place.
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