i have a habit of using that as a speech fill in. alot of times in between sentences i do it. i've heard many things about female voice such as pitch, resonance, tone, and then there's also vocabulary. vocabulary is the one part of gender speech differences i have the hardest time understanding. i can tell the easiest difference between male and female voices by pitch, and the next down would be the way they speak. vocabulary is a hard one, because i hear lots of women who might "speak like men" some times. i just realized that using "like"as a sentence fill in is one of those things that in the area i live would be a female speech habit. i never really realize i'm doing it. it's amazing how our brains have a way of adapting to our gender in ways we might not even think about.

You may be correct on some level, but the words we use have so much to do with education level, professional experience, regional dialect etc... The English language is almost impossible to gender.

I used to use the word "like" at least four times a conversation, it seemed. I became aware of how it made me sound (I didn't like it, thought it too "young" of me, and didn't consider it a gender thing), so I weeded it out of my speech pattern.

Hmmm that might be Emma, but I have noticed a curious thing as I have gotten deeper into HRT. Where at once I used to feel awkward using terms like "Awww," "Honey," "Hon" and putting little hearts on things, it now feels like the most natural thing in the world. What is even more astonishing to me is that I feel those emotions when I use them. The other day I started tearing up when an MTF post-op friend showed me pictures of her in a wedding dress that she hadn't yet shown her girlfriend. Maybe I am more in touch with those emotions now due to the HRT, but all I can say is that my emotional changes have been profound and my use of language has changed to reflect that a bit.

I can understand that. Since I've been out I have also stopped policing the use of certain wordssuch as: cute, pretty, beautiful... I've started readily referring to my male friends as "friend" and females as "sister."  I play with their names... I wonder how it will change as I develop.

Quote from: Melody Maia on March 07, 2011, 11:13:47 PM
Hmmm that might be Emma, but I have noticed a curious thing as I have gotten deeper into HRT. Where at once I used to feel awkward using terms like "Awww," "Honey," "Hon" and putting little hearts on things, it now feels like the most natural thing in the world. What is even more astonishing to me is that I feel those emotions when I use them. The other day I started tearing up when an MTF post-op friend showed me pictures of her in a wedding dress that she hadn't yet shown her girlfriend. Maybe I am more in touch with those emotions now due to the HRT, but all I can say is that my emotional changes have been profound and my use of language has changed to reflect that a bit.

Do you think that's the HRT, or could it be that you are simply dropping all the ways in which, when living as men, we inhibit(ed) our emotions and thus our speech? There are so many things a man isn't allowed or supposed to say or feel or do for fear of seeming effeminate ... but maybe all those words and ways of being are there all along, just unable to come out.

One other thing that strikes me about the difference in male and female speech patterns is the way the two sexes laugh. Men laugh when something is funny, end of story. Women do to, but there's another typically feminine laugh which is less about humour, as such, and more about showing affiliation, understanding, sympathy and affection. It's what you might call a friendship laugh - one stage up from the friendship smile - and it's very, very noticeable whenever two women speak ...

Of course, there's the, 'I'd better laugh at this guy's jokes because he wants me to even though I think he's a jerk' laugh ... but that's a whole other story!

Quote from: Carlita on March 08, 2011, 09:50:56 AM
Do you think that's the HRT, or could it be that you are simply dropping all the ways in which, when living as men, we inhibit(ed) our emotions and thus our speech? There are so many things a man isn't allowed or supposed to say or feel or do for fear of seeming effeminate ... but maybe all those words and ways of being are there all along, just unable to come out.

Men happily do it to themselves as a sign of strength, emotions are for the weak, truth is singular and definite, relying on mercurial emotion which is fallible? haha that's for the weak.  It's one of the reasons why I don't like simple answers, it's feeding the ego is all that ever is.

The great thing is men show emotion all the time, it's a bloody lie that they don't.  There's a correlation with science, ever talk to a 'scientist' (who are near all technicians or teachers not inventive or original at all) they get very emotional about how they rely on truth not emotion.
They don't care about truth they care that truth is simple and knowable.

It's an assumption that everything is knowable, sounds like a belief in God to me, he knows everything...  Knowledge is created and limited, which makes it fantastic and alive.

This world is a corrupt in the way it is masculinized to simplistic sloganized "I am right you are wrong" bull->-bleeped-<-.  When someone sees things from their enemy's point of view, stops demonizing them, we get a breakthrough.

Quote from: Carlita on March 08, 2011, 09:50:56 AM
One other thing that strikes me about the difference in male and female speech patterns is the way the two sexes laugh. Men laugh when something is funny, end of story. Women do to, but there's another typically feminine laugh which is less about humour, as such, and more about showing affiliation, understanding, sympathy and affection. It's what you might call a friendship laugh - one stage up from the friendship smile - and it's very, very noticeable whenever two women speak ...

Men never do the friendship laugh so true!  Carlita sorry about my rambling reply to your first half of your post I'm a complete emotional wreck, at least the Doctor I saw today gave me anti-anxiety meds (non-addictive dammit /joke haha)

This discussion is really interesting, and it made me look at my own speech patterns. Look at one of my vlogs and compare it to my latest one, you'll notice my confidence has improved greatly, and I'm using like and um as fillers to a lesser degree. My style of speaking is now more me, and less valley girl.

Quote from: Carlita on March 08, 2011, 09:50:56 AM
Do you think that's the HRT, or could it be that you are simply dropping all the ways in which, when living as men, we inhibit(ed) our emotions and thus our speech? There are so many things a man isn't allowed or supposed to say or feel or do for fear of seeming effeminate ... but maybe all those words and ways of being are there all along, just unable to come out.

One other thing that strikes me about the difference in male and female speech patterns is the way the two sexes laugh. Men laugh when something is funny, end of story. Women do to, but there's another typically feminine laugh which is less about humour, as such, and more about showing affiliation, understanding, sympathy and affection. It's what you might call a friendship laugh - one stage up from the friendship smile - and it's very, very noticeable whenever two women speak ...

Of course, there's the, 'I'd better laugh at this guy's jokes because he wants me to even though I think he's a jerk' laugh ... but that's a whole other story!

The inhibiting of speech is not an HRT thing, but the emotional aspects behind the words I do indeed believe is a product of the HRT. Yes, I had emotions before, but I am not only more capable of expressing them without shame now, I also feel a range of things I never felt before and I feel them much more deeply. It is like technicolor emotion compared to a simpler black and white. It is that which I believe manifests itself in more colorful language.

Quote from: EmmaM on March 07, 2011, 10:05:10 PM
You may be correct on some level, but the words we use have so much to do with education level, professional experience, regional dialect etc... The English language is almost impossible to gender.

I used to use the word "like" at least four times a conversation, it seemed. I became aware of how it made me sound (I didn't like it, thought it too "young" of me, and didn't consider it a gender thing), so I weeded it out of my speech pattern.

Speech is quite gendered, and in fact gender differences are, to a very large extent, almost identical to regional dialects. Sure, pitch is a big deal. But the way men speak in a clipped monotone with a large dynamic range is mostly a learned behavior, and I remember learning it myself: on my elementary school playground, trying to avoid getting beaten up for talking too much like a girl. You bet English is gendered.

Your second point describes something very similar: You learned to speak in a less "youthful" manner as a result of the peer pressure that made you feel awkward for failing to conform to certain social norms about "proper" speech. Far from being a counterexample to the notion of gendered speech patterns, it is a testament to the power of the outside forces that shape how we speak. And what social force is greater than gender conformity?

Quote from: Alyssa M. on March 09, 2011, 02:14:48 AM
Speech is quite gendered, and in fact gender differences are, to a very large extent, almost identical to regional dialects. Sure, pitch is a big deal. But the way men speak in a clipped monotone with a large dynamic range is mostly a learned behavior, and I remember learning it myself: on my elementary school playground, trying to avoid getting beaten up for talking too much like a girl. You bet English is gendered.

Your second point describes something very similar: You learned to speak in a less "youthful" manner as a result of the peer pressure that made you feel awkward for failing to conform to certain social norms about "proper" speech. Far from being a counterexample to the notion of gendered speech patterns, it is a testament to the power of the outside forces that shape how we speak. And what social force is greater than
gender conformity?

After some reflection, I have decided that I agree with much of what you say. But I know much of the pattern for both genders must be learned.  Though, I have never talked in monotone, and I never got any reaction either.

I always get a little upset hearing of the way  others were forced to conform.

its been my observation that people use "like" for the same reason people use "uh/um"

I like, prefer like! lol