Why do most Japanese women sound like they are talking to babies?

[ghettocities]

Why do the majority of Japanese women sound like they are talking to babies?

Everywhere you go in Japan every woman talks to you like you are a baby. You turn the TV on and all the commercials sound like they are talking to babies and well I personally don't know too many babies who are in the market for a 52" SONY megaman plasma television set, do you?

What's the deal? I'm 23, I ain't no kid no more... And I've done homestays where the housewives even talk like that to their husbands who are like 50 years old!

Does anyone know why? Is this a post war thing? Why do most Japanese women sound like they are talking to babies?

Josh

 

[Davey]

Haha, Yeah I know what you mean. I got a short story about this: My wife does not talk like that, and have well a normal voice?. but when she was working in an hotel they actually told her: Mayuko you have to change your voice! plus wear a pink outfit. and she was like whatt.. so yeah she left in one day.

But still I think it is soo funny, yeah you have to change your voice.

Interesting question

 

[godppgo]

Personally, I like it very much

 

[nice gaijin]

Many think it's cute for women to speak like that. they aren't so much talking like their audiences are children, but rather they're speaking like they are adolescents. This is apparently attractive to a large number of men (otherwise it wouldn't be such a common practice).

 

[mad pierrot]

I really, really hate when they do that.

It drives me NUTS. Women should not sound like muppet babies. What the heck is cute about that? God, one of the people I work with talks like that all the time. I want to smack her in the face so bad.

 

[Mikawa Ossan]

I don't mind it all.

What I hate is when you go to some store or listen to the radio, and the person on the airwaves is speaking in half-Japanese half-English. It makes me want to go deaf, I swear!

 

[Alma]

i wonder how that sounds? i think it can be very annoying

anyway.. i understand that Japanese women do so much stupid things like this.. to be more attractive to Japanese men.. I'm trying to understand why, but it's quite hard..

 

[Ewok85]

Its supposed to be "feminine" and its whats practically beaten into them all the way through to adulthood. So glad my gf can talk like a sailor and never, ever says kawaii.

 

[godppgo]

The way I look at it is this. The feminine expressions sooth my turbid mind and relax my strained nerve. It's like the sound of a caring mother tending to an insecure child. It just makes me feel so satisfied and safe....

 

[Alma]

The way I look at it is this. The feminine expressions sooth my turbid mind and relax my strained nerve. It's like the sound of a caring mother tending to an insecure child. It just makes me feel so satisfied and safe....

that is true.. but all the time and for everybody to speak like that? it's too much, i think.

 

[Elizabeth]

that is true.. but all the time and for everybody to speak like that? it's too much, i think.

I can't stand it either and whether men find it 'soothing' or 'cute or whatever it's ultimately part of an image keeping all women in the low place they find themselves today that will become difficult for any of them to ever get taken seriously.

And it's across all levels of society. I've heard female professors, economics reporters and journalists sound like they were station attendants or nursery school teachers...must be incredibly humilitating to have to keep such a sweet and silly face to the public eye.

 

[godppgo]

And it's across all levels of society. I've heard female professors, economics reporters and journalists sound like they were station attendants or nursery school teachers...must be incredibly humilitating to have to keep such a sweet and silly face to the public eye.

How do you know they feel humiliated expressing their feminine side of personality?
Moreover, what's so humiliating about a female sounding feminine?

 

[Elizabeth]

How do you know they feel humiliated expressing their feminine side of personality?
Moreover, what's so humiliating about a female sounding feminine?

I'm sure a certain percentage, particularly housewives and nonprofessionals, are used to it. All I meant was that most women are forced into it as part of their socialization from a very young age, as others have all said. I don't know anyone who talks that way when they don't think they have to.

It certainly is a factor also in keeping sex discrimination policies in the workplace and the expectation that women will quit their jobs to raise a family. That's almost too obvious to mention. If you had managed to reach
a certain position of achievement (company, academic...) when everything around is still so male dominated would you want the focus on keeping men happy with childish vocal intonations or on your skills, knowledge and abilities ?

 

[mad pierrot]

At the risk of self-incrimination....

It also happens to be the same tone of voice you hear all Japanese girls use in porno flicks.





Coincidence?

I think not.

 

[Mars Man]

Now wait just a second...the lady at the house here never talks to me like that !! What's wrong !! Is Japan going down the drain? hee...hee....hee...

While I agree with especially the couple of posts or so above, I still think that perhaps one main thing is the idea of politeness--although that may still very well be bias against women.

Hey, don't worry mad-pierrot san, I won't tell ...

 

[godppgo]

I'm sure a certain percentage, particularly housewives and nonprofessionals, are used to it. All I meant was that most women are forced into it as part of their socialization from a very young age, as others have all said. I don't know anyone who talks that way when they don't think they have to.
It certainly is a factor also in keeping sex discrimination policies in the workplace and the expectation that women will quit their jobs to raise a family. That's almost too obvious to mention. If you had managed to reach
a certain position of achievement (company, academic...) when everything around is still so male dominated would you want the focus on keeping men happy with childish vocal intonations or on your skills, knowledge and abilities ?

Isn't childish vocal intonations a valid technical skill? People are taught to use various vocal pitches and expressions in a professional presentation to attract audience. To me, feminine expressions and behaviors can be used to a female's advantage in a professional environment just as men who do things they hate inorder to climb up the corporate ladder. (eg, making hysteric laugh when the topic of interest isn't amusing at all)

Many people view housewives as nonprofessionals, but I beg to differ. First of all, being an housewives is no easy task (if not one of the hardest job a human being can endure). It is not fair to judge housewives using the conventional ideas of "professionals" or "technical skills". The so- called "professionals" are merely people who have gained enough technical knowledge so that they can function in an environment where their technical skills are needed. The mental skill required for housewives is what makes their jobs so unique and hard to endure. In my opinion, In terms of contribution to the society as a whole, housewives are much more respectable than many other so-called professionals out there.

Of course, its' all about personal choices for each individual what role they prefer to play in the society.

 

[godppgo]

It also happens to be the same tone of voice you hear all Japanese girls use in porno flicks.
Coincidence?
I think not.

I think it's just sexual preference...there are all sorts of Japanese porno out there...

 

[ArmandV]

I am trying to figure out what exactly the "tone of voice" this thread is referring to. I've never noticed anything except Japanese women clerks are still prattling on even though it should be obvious I can't understand them.

Is it a higher pitch?

 

[nishino_aiki87]

I think that this is part of Japanese culture

 

[Elizabeth]

Isn't childish vocal intonations a valid technical skill? People are taught to use various vocal pitches and expressions in a professional presentation to attract audience. To me, feminine expressions and behaviors can be used to a female's advantage in a professional environment just as men who do things they hate inorder to climb up the corporate ladder. (eg, making hysteric laugh when the topic of interest isn't amusing at all)

A technical skill that even children can master may be one strategy for climbing the corporate ladder or dealing with the public which is why it becomes much less obvious in the higher realms of management ? -- certainly to women superiors I doubt you see those sorts of cute, unthreatening mannerisms much at all.

And while they might be comfortable out of habit and social expectation, many men I knew secretly also hold women like that in contempt intellectually. At the very least, as you say godppgo, refusing to talk down to customers, co-workers, etc shouldn't be a factor that is imposed on anyone or costs them their chance at a job.

 

[yukio_michael]

I can only find a german wiki for what is termed 鰤子 burikko, or the act of prentending to be ko, or a child.

When you watch Japanese television this vocal intonation is pretty prevalent, even around the house my girlfriend would mispronounce words in a childish way, such as chamui chamui instead of the correct, samui for cold, using words like nene, adding the prefix -chan to words that normally don't take them, such as oha-chan~!...

The whole burikko infantilized Japanese female culture did not start until the 70s. There was no equivalent of Morning Musume in the 60s or 70s. In the mid-80s, Onyanko Club (The [wink!] Pussycat Club) comes on the scene, but opposed to the 90s mass-girl groups, Onyanko is all about selling underage sex and lolita fantasies to older men. Everyone accuses Morning Musume of doing this, but they are sexless and spayed compared to the Onyanko who had lyrics like "Please don't make me take off my sailor school uniform." (Se-ra-fuku wo nugasanaide!)

from the once irrepressible marxy, link.

Burikko (jap. 鰤子) is a Japanese Slang expression for a gekünstelt childlike behavior of women. The expression sits down together from kanji 子, (ko, child) and 鰤 (buri), a certain Thunfischart designation, in reality is however 振る (buru, behave as) meant the verb. [...]

Burikko behavior manifests itself in high voice[...]

-excerpt translated from ger. wiki.

 

[Ma Cherie]

That is one of the reasons why I do not like nor listen to most jpop music, the voices are too high pitched for me and I cannot stand that. I remember watching a documentery on PBS a long time ago, something to do with the Japanese economy, anyways there's a woman who was talking in that same baby-ish tone. It didn't seem right to me, because I think that woman was almost thirty.

 

[yukio_michael]

That is one of the reasons why I do not like nor listen to most jpop music, the voices are too high pitched for me and I cannot stand that.

My secret shame is that I love this sort of Jpop, songs which are mostly shrill girlish (oddly all writen by older men) paeans to love... I listen to it with the headphones on though.

 

[doinkies]

So do I...really embarrassing...XD but I can't resist doinky bubblegum pop!

Though not all female J-pop singers have squeaky voices...just the ぶりっ子 ones, mostly...

Nakashima Mika, for example, has a deep husky voice, not very squeaky at all. ^^

 

[Elizabeth]

I think that this is part of Japanese culture

Yeah, a lot of the culture is exactly like that and dumbed down to some extent. It's why there are detailed, and of course animated, signs in stations explaining how to buy a ticket, in cafeteria lines on how to pick up a tray, choose your food, deposit the tray, on bridges not to jump into the water and drown
why everything is repeated a million times in a painfully slow drawl...etc

These standards are societal, though, and not necessarily internalized at all so
it doesn't imply anyone is expected to be incompetent (just the opposite in my experience) or certainly not impolite if they don't relate to people this way.