What is it with the vocal fry!! Just stop!!

[usedcars11]

I manage a girl less than half my age and she is driving me insane.

She has this low, croaky vocal fry voice where she drawwwwwssss ouuuut every syllable, It must hurt her throat to talk like it!.

She also sniffs constantly, I sit right next to her and have thought about offering a tissue but I dont want to offend her.

On the other hand she is genuinely driving me insane with the dopey, drawling voice and the sniffing.

Is it ok to speak to her about it? I suspect the sniffing I can address but I dont feel I can ask her to just bloody speak properly!

ARGHH

Offer her a tissue and then leave her alone.

Her voice is just her voice and if it winds you up, that's a 'you problem' that you'll need to learn to deal with.

I have a colleague who drives me barmy with how she talks. It's bordering vocal fry but mainly the long drawn out vowels. Vaaaaaaaahhhhwuuuuuuuuhlsssszz.

It is a me problem. They're not going to change how they speak

I would definitely refrain from commenting on someone's voice just as I would any other physical thing about somebody's body.

Ask her whether she's got a cold because she sounds like she's got a sore throat and offer a tissue. Hope she gets the hint. She won't. But you can't really do any more than that without it being bullying.

Yes I definitely dont want to come across as bullying. She speaks really deep, like a man and this croak for a voice. Absolutely put on - Id struggle to speak like it. She's also got this really dopey tone to her voice.

I think I just need to move her 😂

DH calls me out sometimes on a vocal fry. I don’t know I’m doing it and I can’t hear it - he says it’s not all the time but I don’t know what I’m doing differently when he mentions it. It’s just my voice!

Vocal fry is an adopted affectation that you can do something about, it's not 'just her voice', it's like someone saying 'yah?' at the end of every sentence. Just stop doing it.

Not sure you can tell her OP, I doubt it would go down well, it would annoy the hell out of me too. though The sniffing I would be more tolerant of, she might have a nasal condition of some kind.

Yes, behave kindly but assertively as though you think she has a cold, and offer her tissues and throat lozenges. She might snap out of the vocal fry over time if she grasps no one is using it in the workplace and it's not a vocal habit which is doing her any favours there.

Yes, I agree about the sniffing and the possible cold being the approachable part of this, you can't nitpick about someones voice, however infuriating. Sorry.

Can you start muttering ‘Red-rum red-rum’ every time she does it?

Vocal fry is an adopted affectation that you can do something about, it's not 'just her voice'

It's how she chooses to speak and it's her choice.

If the OP cannot deal with it, she'll have to try harder as it's not the young woman's problem.

I’d swap her for my colleague who knows everything, has had every disease and ailment known to modern medicine and likes to say “I told X that I KNOW what they are going through “ It does matter what it is, she’s had it/been through it. She goes so far as telling the person to say ABC when talking to any medical professional

she Chat GPT’d a script for me once on what I should say - I was polite in telling her I’m a grown up and can speak for myself
She’s not really chatty to me anymore .

Do you have misophonia?

I was so relieved when I found out it was a thing and that other people suffer from it, I really struggle with it.

One of my biggest triggers is vocal fry and it seems to be everywhere - especially adverts.
I don’t have any social media except mumsnet and couldn’t stand to watch influencers with their put on voices and vocal frrrrry. Even thinking about it is winding me up! 😆.

I wouldn’t be able to cope with sniffing and I’ve just had to move seats 3 times on a train because I forgot my loop earplugs and AirPods.
It felt like everyone was coughing, sniffing, rustling wrappers, chewing or talking loudly on phones.

You could get loops, they do work and I have the switch ones so I can choose how much I need to block out.

You have my sympathy, it’s so hard at work when you can’t say anything, at least I can tell family and friends they are triggering me and move away or put earplugs/headphones in blatantly.

What if she chose to talk in a really loud shout, or in a growl would that be OK ? exercise your free choice if you want, bit it's also fine for others to be annoyed by it when it is unnecessarily annoying. Talking in a very annoying way is quite anti social and like other anti social habits is unreasonable.

Also many people have vocal problems that they can't help, and life is hard for them, so I don't have much sympathy for someone who chooses to talk in a silly affected way for attention because they have jumped on a trendy bandwagon.
You should be aware that others have to work with you and not do annoying things that you can easily not do.

I draw out the last syllable of certain words. No idea why. My siblings do similar. I hate the sound of my own voice, I know it is incredibly annoying but I've spoken this way since childhood, I don't know how to stop.

As for the sniffing, is she British? In some cultures its viewed as incredibly rude to blow your nose ans sniffing is preferable.

Horrendous isn’t it!

It’s an intensely annoying affectation. I have a weekly meeting on Teams with someone whose vocal fry drives me mad. Sometimes and forgets and I briefly hear her normal voice, and then we’re back to the low, rough drawl 🤬

It's not "just how she speaks". They pick it up and then force it. The Kardashians started it, and now everyone does it. The youngsters who speak like this in the UK are probably too young to have watched the Kardashians in their heyday, but so many on US TV do it because of them, and so it's those people who young people are copying.

That would drive me batshit crazy.

I don't think it's always a choice. I went to school 30 years ago with a girl who has permanent vocal fry.

Vocal fry makes me want to murder people. It triggers me so much! Rage🤬
luckily I don’t have to be around it much. Adverts - I just avoid.

I’d ask her if she was ok. ‘Sounds like you have a sore throat and a blocked nose’.

I don’t understand why people do it, in the first place??
Is it supposed to be ‘cool’? 🤷‍♀️

Here is Rory Stewart vocal frying all over the place.

Here is Kristin Scott-Thomas, also with lots of vocal fry.

And here's the King. Listen to how he says "congress" about 25 seconds in.

It's completely normal to use vocal fry at times in the lower range of your voice- it's optional in the sense that you can deliberately not do it but most people are not consciously doing it- it's simply part of the ordinary prosody of their speech. Sounds a bit odd when someone's speech is almost all fry, but it's one of those things that tends to annoy people much more when done by a young woman than by anyone else, for some reason. I don't think you can ask her not to do it and I don't think you can be sure how much, if any, is being deliberately put on.

The sniffing would drive me nuts though and I would offer her a tissue.

I don't know but its on par with talking in a baby voice like Dawn French does for irritation factor.

So I'd never heard of this and I looked at some speech and language stuff on YouTube just now.
I suspect the accusation could, on occasion, be levelled at me. I'm asthmatic. My partner can always tell when my asthma is playing up because my voice changes.
Yes, it probably does sound weird/affected/put-on/fake/dramatic and all the other accusations. I naturally have a relatively low voice anyway, and when it goes awry, I think I sound like a dalek. I hate it. But most of the time he'll be aware of it before I am and he'll make a joke about it.
But yeah I'm pretty sure there are those who would think I was faking it to sound cool or sexy or whatever...or at least they would if I was 30 years younger...

Edited for typo