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frosted flake
Your Linguistic Profile: |
| 40% General American English |
| 35% Yankee |
| 15% Dixie |
| 10% Upper Midwestern |
| 0% Midwestern |
The above meme, passed around my office as a bonding exercise, is a total farce. Why? Not because I ain’t a little bit country, a little bit… dork but because last week, I interviewed Some Important Person Somewhere for the first time, reviewed the tape thereafter on my headphones, and proceeded to die a slow, mortified death.
There is so much you don’t know about me. There is so much I never knew about me. There is so much that the above linguistic graph leaves out, namely that I am, apparently, and much to my horror…
100% Valley Girl.
This is so humiliating. Here I thought I was an educated, intelligent, nearly-30 embodiment of above-average articulation. When I fretted over a phone interview for this job, I was told more than once not to worry because I “give good phone,” whatever that is supposed to mean. Why has nobody ever told me the truth?
He: “Well, we feel that … is a real value-add.”
Me: “GRE-EA-ATE!”
He: “We have contracted teams of researchers from …”
Me: “That’s GREEAA-ATE!”
Please, just kill me now.
My boss says not to worry, she’s done hundreds of interviews and still cringes at the sound of her own voice, insisting that it is has a distinct chipmunk-like quality.
“At least you don’t sound like Tony the Tiger!”
“No, just Alvin, Simon, and Theodore!”
Forget that whole “face for radio” thing; what I really have is a voice for print. Good riddance.
comments (6)
I think we all cringe a bit hearing our own voices. I was an announcer one year at a classical radio station and was convinced that the yee-haw police were going to come after me for my Texas twang. (It's disappeared finally after living elsewhere for the last 15 years.)
1 | Robert | April 19, 2005 02:07 PM
Everyone hates the sound of their own voice. If I typed the way I talk, you'd be mortified. I sound like an awful combination of my mother, a gay man, and a 15 year old stoner. In fact, I sound so much like my mother that people I've known since childhood still can't tell us apart on the phone.
2 | Colleen | April 19, 2005 03:22 PM
As a long-time cringer of my own nitty-gritties, I guess I'm lucky that I've never minded my own voice. Sure, it doesn't sound like ME, but it doesn't sound annoying-- it just sounds like someone else. A president's 30-something receptionist out to lunch, debating Marxism with her roommate. A barista that knows how to make chocolate croissants. Polite, knowledgeable, and NOT ME.
3 | Anna | April 19, 2005 04:01 PM
Consider yourself lucky; I sound exactly like my mother! To the point where even my father has difficulty telling us apart :(
4 | emma | April 19, 2005 04:25 PM
I get you. When I speak, I sound just like Lauren Bacall. Yet if you were to record it and play it back, someone would have switched my voice for that of an eight year old boy sucking on helium balloons.
5 | mgood | April 20, 2005 10:30 AM
I scored the exact same distribution on the American English test. That's nonsense! I betcha Dupin, Margs and Angie would've scored the same. You live in DC for a spell and this is what you get.
6 | Loser | April 20, 2005 02:32 PM