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Frame from Vocal Fry: what it is, who does it, and why people hate it! Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Vocal Fry: what it is, who does it, and why people hate it!

Dr Geoff Lindsey
Explainers
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2024–2026 score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN points to it as an expert correction of myths about vocal fry, showing it is a normal speech pattern across groups.

Linguist Geoff Lindsey explores vocal fry: what it is, who uses it, how it relates to glottal stops and accents, and why some people dislike it.

“it's not just that. It's (also?) a normal speech pattern, used by different genders, ages, and social groups, in many languages.” (HN, 2026)

1 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 1 citations · Explainers

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@qwery Sep 2024 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Who is responsible for the greatest change to our language? Teenage girls
You might also be interested in Dr Geoff Lindsey's video on 'vocal fry'[0] which is a linguistic phenomenon also associated with young women (although it isn't that simple). Dr Lindsey's channel is totally bitchin' like you wouldn't believe. You'll love it! I'm sure. [0] [this video]
Linguist's video on vocal fry and gender.
@ggus Mar 2026 Recommends
on HN thread TADA: Fast, Reliable Speech Generation Through Text-Acoustic Synchronization
"Vocal fry", aka "creaky voice". It's stereotypically associated with irritating young women. I like me a good rabbit hole that's interesting and also digs into stereotypes. Turns out, like many memes, it's not just that. It's (also?) a normal speech pattern, used by different genders, ages, and social groups, in many languages. This doesn't mean that vocal fry isn't used as social signaling. But complaining about it, well, isn't that social signalling too? Geoff Lindsey - Vocal Fry: what it is, who does it, and why people hate it! - [this video]
Shows vocal fry is normal speech across groups.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@queuebert May 2024 Cites it
on HN thread OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show
I don't find any of the OpenAI voices sexy or deferential. They sound fake happy to me, like a customer service phone menu or an elementary school teacher, and reek of Bay area vocal fry [1] and lilt. I wish there was a greater diversity of accents and speaking patterns available, such as can be seen on the Speech Accent Archive [2]. 1. [this video] 2. [link]
Cited for vocal fry in synthetic voices.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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