How do females speak?

[Cindy]

No, I am talking about dialects... not jut speech patterns... but I understand why you would think that. Women speak in London dialects, New York dialects, French... etc. So do men.  The word dialect is not perfect but I am trying to stretch the term for my class.

I am taking a dialect class (my Cockney rocks!) and our final project is to teach a dialect we have learned on our own, to the rest of the class.

Yes, I am using the term "dialect" loosely here... and I would need to have my project approved by the Professor (which may not happen... because by definition, a dialect is regional). But I am looking at ways to teach actors how to speak like a female. You may be surprised to learn how often actors are cast in another gender. Especially when an actor has to play several roles in a single play. Actors are often cast as animals and other bizarre things too.

So generalities are accepted by me.

Us actors start with a general dialect and them modify it based on our character's specific traits, education, social role... etc.

OK thanks Tori for the explanation, and sorry for missing your name BTW

Well, how did Will Shakespeare go about it? All of his actors would have been male, but he wrote male and female parts quite specifically, and that he and his society expected to understand that a specific actor was male or female was important. Even as far as Cleopatra from Mark Anthony, and I presume they were sexed up roles then as well, even more so I expect.

Again in pantomime acting, (lord this is going back many years) the dame was always a male character dressed as a female and the leading 'man' was always a female playing a guy. The audience never seemed to have a problem with this dichotomy, indeed it was understood that it was part of the performance.

So from these points I would suggest that the female/ male character influence is not presented on dialect or speech patterns but on visual disguise and presentation. Just recalling the film, Victor/Victoria, I forget the name of the actress (Julie Andrews?), she was obviously female in both characters and made no attempt to alter her voice, but the concept of the film was to fool the film characters that this person was either male or female and that the 'virile' male lead could be fooled.

So possibly for your treatise change the question. How and why are actors expected to convince an audience of their characters gender (or even sexuality). It is broader but more focussed.

Good Luck

Cindy

[Tori]

OK thanks Tori for the explanation, and sorry for missing your name BTW

Well, how did Will Shakespeare go about it? All of his actors would have been male, but he wrote male and female parts quite specifically, and that he and his society expected to understand that a specific actor was male or female was important. Even as far as Cleopatra from Mark Anthony, and I presume they were sexed up roles then as well, even more so I expect.

Again in pantomime acting, (lord this is going back many years) the dame was always a male character dressed as a female and the leading 'man' was always a female playing a guy. The audience never seemed to have a problem with this dichotomy, indeed it was understood that it was part of the performance.

So from these points I would suggest that the female/ male character influence is not presented on dialect or speech patterns but on visual disguise and presentation. Just recalling the film, Victor/Victoria, I forget the name of the actress (Julie Andrews?), she was obviously female in both characters and made no attempt to alter her voice, but the concept of the film was to fool the film characters that this person was either male or female and that the 'virile' male lead could be fooled.

So possibly for your treatise change the question. How and why are actors expected to convince an audience of their characters gender (or even sexuality). It is broader but more focussed.

Good Luck

Cindy

Thank you Cindy, for your thoughtful reply.



It is thought Shakespearian plays cast young and/or effeminate men in the female roles (at least the romantic ones... The Nurse in Romeo and Juliette was probably played by a big man for comic effect).

The pantomimes you speak about were also, cast that way for comic reasons. A man can easily bring out the absurdity of being female and vice versa.

Victor/Victoria is a tough one. It is Julie Andrews and she can't physically lower her voice too much. A man can raise his voice easier and with more resonance than a woman can lower hers. Make-up and text had to do much of the work. Interesting film, by the way.

I still think a man can learn to speak like a woman... and, for actors, this "dialect" comes around as frequently as Irish, Canadian, or French.

[eli77]

So you mean a female accent? Example:

Male voices tend to be more monotone with volume over pitch used for emphasis. Female voices tend to be less monotone ("sing-song") with pitch over volume used for emphasis. In my little part of the word, female voices have a big increase in pitch at the ends of sentences / fragments of speech - this is common to all the "valley girl" accents. The male version of the Ottawa Valley accent doesn't include this.

Male voices tend to be more staccato with breaks between the words. Female voices tend to "flow," with words slurring slightly one into the next.

Male voices tend to resonate in the chest. Female voices tend to resonate in the head. (Actually, after pitch this is the single most important cue we use for gendering a voice.)

That kind of thing?

Here, this document has a list of the differences in male and female voices:

http://vch.eduhealth.ca/PDFs/GA/GA.100.C362.pdf