I wasn't gonna like, subscribe to your channellll? but like, I saw this videoooo? and I like, literally liked it so muchhhh? that I had to like, like it and subscribe to your channelllll.
i didnt know what these were called and was annoyed everytime i saw an american speak like that (im an indian), thank you for clarifying what this is and also incorporating a sense of value for articulation, much respect
I'm with you 🤝❤Vocal fry...yuck, "like" is getting way over, uptalk sounds a bit moronic💨. But what is the most annoying to me is when some RUclips teachers add "Ok? Ok?" to every phrase they say. Thank you very much Luke for not doing that💖💖💖.
YAAAASSSSS. I'm so with you! I want to be a member of the elite and dwindling group of people who speak with clarity and eloquence. It is tough though! I must admit I'm far from perfect. I don't think I use it too liberally, but pretty sure I'm dropping likes on the daily ;) Since our dreaded/beloved smart phones listen to everything we say anyway, I'd love an app that counts your "like" bombs and lets you know, percentage wise, how you're scoring at the end of each day.
It's would say it's less: I don't really care enough to be articulate, but USELESS information. As a southern Appalachian... We at least got a purpose to sometimes being sing-songy with pitch distinction if the "t+aspiration, d, voiced th, and voiceless th" get mixed in, we make a distinction with strict grammar, avoid repeated syllables, and just raise the vowel, not the word for the love of god. It's annoying to deal with valley girl accent as they speak too slowly! Also confusing as every syllable either gets stressed or not here. So when listening to them, we can't tell if the said person is asking a question or not. It's like shakespeare or his relatives going into an uneducated area. You get a very much constant first syllable rhythm, then whenever these people speak it's so slow and useless creak that doesn't do anything! Danish at least takes advantage and sounds nice with the potato in mouth.
@@MaoRatto Thank you! I always thought that the accent sounded like people were always unsure of themselves; the odd, constant inflection pattern where the emphasis is placed upon the preceding adjective ("BLUE car") makes it sound like everyone's always trying to clarify something ("Which car?" "The BLUE car."). It sounds incredibly uneducated, and is very uncharacteristic of how Germanic languages typically stress words.
I picked up English conversation growing up in the valley, and it took some time to realize that Iwas doing valley speak. I eventually manage to get it under control by working on aligning my spoken English with my written English, which was much more articulate and people could actually understand what I’m trying to say without being distracted by the verbal valley distractions. It still comes out from time to time, but mostly during gossip sessions either the girls, it’s just more fun and natural to me. Although, I will admit, it really does sound like we’re airheads when you are not in the actual conversation.
Speaking as a native Southern Californian, I think that if you're over the age of 25 and cannot express yourself in a concise and articulate manner understandable to a wide audience - well, like literally go get like, help? I mean, you totally sound like, soooo lame? Fer sure!
My friend and I overheard this vocal fry in Michigan and couldn't stop laughing. My friend is an English Teacher and very articulate in her speech which I enjoy.
Well I'm part of this club Luke lmao. I just don't enjoy how this sounds, I don't mind if people prefer this instead but I get so annoyed by how overboard these people go with "like" "y'know" "literally".
I think about this often… Like you, I also highly value communication and articulation. Valley Speak - especially upspeak - contains a degree of pretension. It sounds as if the speaker is ‘talking down’ to the listener. This makes sense given that it began as an upper-class American accent Good work Max
What about the phenomenon of beginning every sentence with the word "So"? I hear this all the time, even people interviewing or being interviewed on TV in their "public" voice as you suggested. Even though it extends completely out of the "Valley", I remember it distinctly in the movie Clueless when "Cher"/Alicia Silverstone began her class debate argument with "So".
Thaank you for the video... like literally, so inspirationalll... m'yeah (like i am from indonesia and in our language, we have the valley style uptalk too, spoken usually my up mid class)
I am Dutch and listen to a lot of American stuff, podcasts fe. Just now I discovered there's a name for that way of speaking that I hate: vocal fry. I have stopped listening to podcasts in which the main characters speak like that, because it makes me sick. I also hate the constant interjection of the word like.
@mychannel-rt2gn it doesn't make me angry. Vocal fry is almost impossible to listen to because it makes me very uncomfortable. My stomach starts aching because of it. That's why I don't wanna listen to it.
These people are Californians and they are barely literate, so please roast it further. These folks annoy me with great anger due to one part of their lack of reading skills and one part. Can you *not* use an interjection, but this is the exact reason why I don't want them going to the bible belt, and also they got a group of splinters and call that their tongue.
I was watching 3 vloggers in their 30s i found so irritating and dumb and i just realized that they were talking like a valley girl. I'm from the Philippines btw
This. I don't want to have the "valley girl" accent (or use the "valley speak"), espeically as a grown-up bearded guy, but even my english tutor uses it. Also in many youtube videos, which are my main source of english learning.
Vocal fry! I’d never heard of it before but I knew there was something about Sam Altman’s interviews that I found totally annoying put I couldn’t put my finger on it, and that’s what it is, vocal fry. Thanks for highlighting what it actually was.
This is a shame. I'm a Spanish speaking old guy learning English. Well articulate English is so beautiful. I love watching old Americans movies only because how well English was spoken back in those days
I saw it morph in three stages in the last four decades. It went from using "like basically, like literally" in the 1970s and 1980s as a non-verbal exclamation in verbal form when hesitating between the end of one phrase within a sentence and the next (which went across The Pond and they still use "basically" and "actually" in London and the Home Counties) - it used to be "um" but now it's "like" and other variations; to using Upspeak (speaking every sentence or phrase as if it were a question with rising intonation on the last syllable - that one seems to have become mainstream Down Under and is sometimes called "Australian Question Intonation" (AQI), which is weird as it denotes a working class person); to now effecting a Vocal Fry, for which I think we can thank early 21st Century reality TV people. It's not an accent because an accent is a style. This is a fashion, not a style, and in a decade or two it'll be out of date.
as a european student going to a school focused on english it is hard to listen to so many people adopt this valley girl way of speaking without realizing it, some people do it more some people do it less, there are some really bad cases but the worst thing is that I see the word "like" being overused by almost everyone, even me, so my goal for the next school year is to focus on getting rid of that habit.
Agree with your analysis and comments at the end. Here in central Indiana, "Right?" is tacked on to the end of many sentences... It's like, Valley Girl English is a Mind Virus, right?
I think that is infuriating, as " Do you *not* know what syllable stress is or not? " Is the valley girl mind virus not important or not? Normally the default would be "It's like the English valley girl mind virus, right? Specifically, I would call it "The Californian valley girl mind virus" as it's hard to understand as it's a misuse of stress to make a difference between the point or deficit in vocabulary. Also, I barely would call spoken "Californian" a part of English due to how slow, even sounding, and a bluntly illiterate without the ability to read at an eighth grade level. These people only get through class with a D.
In "but, like"the like is an attempt to undermine the brutality of saying but which can be construed as a prelude to an aggressive, argumentative confrontation
It seems to me that this phenomenon is related to the quality of education for children and teens in the U.S. Learning how to speak articulately used to be a fundamental part of being educated and literate.
You forgot "totally" and "what everrr" 😂😂 I first heard that and the valley accent from the movie "clueless" I think this accent started to be a fancy trend way back in the 90s
Actually, it was the '80s. A great example is Whoopi Goldberg's Live on Broadway special from 1985. It's here on RUclips. One of the six (?) characters she portrays (brilliantly) is a Valley Girl. I also remember watching comedian Lois Bromfield do a Valley Girl routine at a video bar in the late '80s.
Vocal fry (at least the way it sounds now, far more extensive, much more drawn out, much sleepier, deeper) is a somewhat newer thing. The other stuff has been there since the early 80s but I think (modern) fry started becoming popular maybe around 2000? A little after that? It’s not really a part of original val speak the way say Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian do it. But like, literally used as emphasis, upspeak, etc. was already pretty much universal across US highschools by early to mid-80s, like super totally widespread nationwide. TBH, some of it was even more widespread back then than even today.
I entirely agree with what you said in the video, but unfortunately, it seems that this is how English is evolving. I know some people of considerable intelligence (and have heard others on public radio) who misuse/overuse "like" significantly, are aware that they do it, but continue to do it nonetheless. I also have a friend who is a linguist who has counseled me to get used to it because "it is the language evolving, like it or not." I do feel, like you, that many people find it too much effort to express themselves precisely and efficiently, and those of us who do make the effort are fewer and fewer all the time. And almost any attempt to encourage others to "clean up their verbal act" gets met with resentment.
Ngl when I noticed so many valley speaks out there in tv shows and media which pretty much makes valley become modern American accent. And I was like oh my gosh I must be like quitting watching these before it form my muscle memories. Anyway I decide to speak modern rp British accent in English now
"Like" is a pause word in Valley Girl English (and increasingly contemporary English as a whole). It doesn't mean anything in this context, it's just the same as um or uh. It stands out because of course like is also a content word sometimes (as when the girl in this video used it to introduce paraphrased speech) but it's not the only content word that gets used as filler: some people say y'know, actually or basically in the same context Influential dialects tend to emerge in waves radiating from regions with high amounts of cultural capital, for example the British Received Pronunciation, which I think it's fair to say still commands a certain prestige even in the US, is often taught to learners as standard, but it started out as a peculiar non-standard way of speaking associated with Oxbridge universities So I would put to you, what else is in the San Fernando valley? There's a reason why the region has so much cultural capital right now
@@CloudEnglish lmao If you couldn't tell I'm firmly in the camp of "it's not lazy, people just sound that way", and it is a mind virus, spread by celebrities and influencers around the world I don't know if I agree that it's inarticulate, as with any accent you have to tune into it What's interesting to consider is what if the backlash against it pushes English in some opposing direction - New York English? London English? Aussie English?
Why i am intrigued by the valley style, is simply because English is complicated for asians like myself, observe Singaporean english, its practically chopped chopped words and put them in a sentence, we all understand clearly without the need to think, past tense rules, past perfect .... hah too confusing... and the latin adopted words aarrgh adding more complication
I hate the question up turn at the end. But tbh I do have that crackly voice and I say like too much…idk where it came from but I never really noticed till I watched this. 😂
I do not have this regional accent or what you want to call it. Although, I still have a problem with overusing filler words. I am talking about ummm, like, and so. To sound more confident and articulate I am going to make this a long time goal to almost omit those words from my vocabulary. I appreciate the video! Speaking of the video, the accent I cannot bear to hear. I will just kindly say that.
It's called the California accent! My mom's side of the family is from the Appalachian mountains and those folks have a whole other English not understood by the majority of Americans!
Im the next level of this mind virus - I abuse like even during writing - good that writing is free of vocal fry or uptalk cuz im sure i would do it if possible :(
lol…. This is how all southern Californian natives talk. Southern California has Hollywood. Hollywood has reality tv and movies, hence the entire world now thinks the way natives have spoken their entire life is something they can change. Most Californians, especially SoCal cannot fix the way they speak, similar of someone from North Carolina or Texas. Should it be taught, no. It’s a cultural thing and us natives do not even know we speak this way until we go to another state or location and someone points this out to us. I think it’s strange that other states would teach this accent, as I would not want to be taught to speak another accent unless it was for a job. It is a very difficult accent to break, as someone who speaks valley, I have tried to fix it. I cannot lol so I stay true to who I am and where I come from. Others can take it or leave it. But the Kardashians literally are from the valley and speak like everyone born and raised in most of SoCal.
In Germany, the majority of the people can speak in at least two modalities: local accent and standard German which are mutually intelligeable to a native speaker in most cases of accents. If you have a trained ear you'll still know where they grew up even if they speak standard German. If you want to sound authentic you use your native accent, if you want to be recognised as professional you`ll use the standard German accent. German accents vary as much and are as thick as British accents.
Language is a construct that's always changing. There is no "correct" way to speak it, only ways that people (usually privileged groups) have arbitrarily said is correct. This is just criticizing an accent and saying "back in my day we said more words to make the same point".
100%. But that “back in my day” type of opinion is part of the overall zeitgeist, which may, even to a tiny tiny degree, tilt the axis. I’m advocating my position, as everyone should.
@@CloudEnglish Advocating for one does not does not have to mean devaluing the other. Of course conventional speaking is more useful in professional settings like your teaching environment, but informal speak can bring frivolity and fun to the right social context like the videos you sampled. There isn't just one axis. These two styles occupy niches as far apart as it gets and they both bring value to their respective context. Neither are worthy of the connotation of "mind virus".
Been trying to figure out why I can’t stand the way some people talk. Now I know why. Upspeak sounds whiny and self inflating. Vocal Fry is “like” static on the radio, and injecting like between every word makes us all sound stupid.
Just read the comments, and there's so much negativity and controversy that I'm like-can't people understand languages are literally flexible and adaptable along with like-the people that actually use them? Greetings from Ukraine.
And Ivanka Trump and Elisabeth Holmes as well. But in those cases they want to convey sincerity and authority. Fortunately, it is completely artificial and way overdone and easy to detect.
I think a lot of you have warped and nasty reasons for hating vocal fry. It’s not harmful to the vocal cords, in contradiction to the misinformation people love spreading, and it doesn’t make someone unintelligent. It’s perfectly normal and sometimes even necessary to use vocal fry when speaking Danish and the Danes haven’t experienced a mass loss of our voices because of this, and I don’t think Danes sound unintelligent. Tagging Kim Kardashian shows that you have ulterior and outright hateful motives for disliking vocal fry and making this video as a whole. Valley girls and the way they speak aren’t hurting anyone find something else to be mad about, this isn’t the 80’s anymore.
@@CloudEnglish I first called this accent "Disney/sitcom accent" without knowing its origin. After looking into different videos (including yours), now I understand that it is a local accent which grows more and more popular. While the belief that valley girl accent "sounds more native" is not factually correct, it is so convincing in my country (& most asian countries) Obviously the origin of this accent is not taught in English class for asian student. Secondly, we are exposed to English language mostly via foreign media (for example, disney channel, sitcom, block buster movies, etc.). In my country, English teachers (who are mostly females) advices student to watch movies such as How I met your mother, FRIENDS, etc. to improve listening & learn how to speak naturally. Thirdly, this valley girl accent sounds VERY DIFFERENT to ears of Asian people (almost as if the speaker becomes a completely different person from his/her Asian origin). That's why it is the cool thing among Asian community. Asian parent praises their kids for sounding as foreign as possible. People like this accent even more that correct pronunciation. Some even express dislike to their local Asian accent in speaking English (saying that its sounds dumb, unlike native speakers, etc.). The issue is similar to the trend of asian students making a foreign name when studying abroad. There is a big debate on my country;s social media about vocal fry/valley girl accent at the moment (which makes me want to learn more about it). The current situation is that proponents for vocal fry outweight the opponents by miles.
@@plainseed This is a fantastic analysis. I thought I was the only human left on the planet thinking seriously about this trend. Great to know there are at least two of us. In fact, I do not oppose this way of speaking. Who am I to tell people how to speak? I'm just some dude on RUclips. However, I think it's important to make people aware that 'native' is a very broad category, and there are many ways to 'sound native'. The reason I call it a mind virus is that it seems to be adopted globally without resistance. And the reason it is adopted globally without resistance is that it is very easy to adopt. It is a low-effort way to communicate. In my view, the right way to think about it is to simply ask yourself: "What kind of impression do I want to make when I speak?" We ask ourselves this kind of question when we get dressed, or buy a car; why wouldn't we do the same for the way we speak? It's at least worth considering a secondary mode of articulate speech for those times when "valley girl" could create the impression that you just can't be bothered.
Yeah the more I think about it, the sort of vocal fry discussed in this video and a few other similar videos by others, really isn't Valley Girl. No Valley Girl ever sounded like the kids in those clips near the start. That said all the other stuff about like and literally and so on is true val speak. Just the deep extended grinding fry all over the place is something different. So it is true to an extent that everyone is Valley Girl now because of all of the likes and the like (!) and upspeak but the Kardashian fry (maybe better called Hilton fry since hers seems more extreme and getting closer to those kids or what you sometimes hear around today) is an entirely different aspect that has taken over and is not really quite like val speak even if some of them did sometimes use a bit of fry. I might call this video Kardashian/Hilton Speak or Millennial Mangled Valley Speak or SoCal 2.0 Speak. The super extended, hyper long, deep fry thing some do now and that you show in the first two clips in this video are like sooo totally not at all what the Valley Girls sounded like or like what you'd hear if you went to high school in the 80s, anywhere. The real Valley Girls just did not sound like that, much less the average person in other parts of the nation in the 80s (where the accent part of it tended to often be much weaker). I did not hear that in high school or at the mall in the 80s. This sort of extreme fry speaking came like almost two decades after val speak. I believe the super strong, really deep, sleepy, really drawnout, every word, extreme vocal fry that was popularized by Paris Hilton around the very end of the 90s/super early 00s?? She is a mix of non-Valley rich LA and rich Upper East Side NYC upbringing. I think Kim Kardashian picked it up from her and then was the one who really, really, really spread it?? But K.K. is not and never was an OG Valley Girl. She is the wrong generation and lived in the wrong location. The true Valley Girls were early GenX of SFV/richer parts of Encino and val speak was spread across the nation by early to late mid-GenX. I don't recall hearing people talking like Paris Hilton in high school in the 80s in CA, NJ, MA or anywhere. Some of those with the full on full Valley Girl accent in the 80s did have some fry at times, but I believe it was usually much shorter and less drawn out (many times just a fraction of a second), often only used at the very last word of a phrase, used less often in general, often maintained the same pitch, sometimes even going higher and squeaky, quick and energetic, rather than the long, slow, sleepy deep fry of Hilton (and sometimes Kardashian) and that you hear today. At least to my ears, it seemed so different in the extent and the ways in which it was carried out compared to what I often hear today, that I feel it would be more accurate to consider it to be something entirely different. In most of the country, I don't think much of the super full on Valley accent really spread around universally beyond the barest trace as sort of a generic 80s accent and those who did retain it more strongly still generally had it in more muted form outside of that region. Super widespread in full was the spread of much of the slang along with a few patterns of speech like some extended vowels and upspeak and occasionally usage of heavier bits of the accent by some at times. That said, sometimes for certain phrases it wasn't that rare to hear full on Valley Girl accent like for "totally bitchin'", sometimes you could hear that getting almost Moon Zappa in Valley Girl level strongly Val accented and sometimes you could hear some SoCal surfer dude accent to a degree at select times from some people all over. Valley Girl was a GenX creation (although some of the terms date back farther to prior gens). The extreme, sleepy, constant, deep vocal fry is more of a late Xennial/early Millennial creation. That along with bro and some other slang didn't spread out until almost two decades after Valley Girl did. (Side note, I see some Gen Z and Millennials hold up Clueless in their videos as a prime example of Valley Girl but that came out over a decade later and featured a lot of new sayings like "as if" that were not around at all when the Valley Girls did their thing.) All the oh my god, dude, like, totally, soooo totally, awesome, literally used purposefully as an extreme emphasizer, stoked, wicked, gnarly, rad, bitchin' (although these last two seem to be used less today in many areas), gnarly, you know, dragged out vowels at times, upspeak, are all 80s slang/ways of speaking, mostly to all derived from Valley Girl/SoCal surfer/skater (some of terms like tubular, grody and especially gag me with a spoon didn't really get widespread usage across most parts of the country though even back then much less today), some of that stuff was even far more prevalent back then than even today (at least among middle school/HS/college crowd, it hadn't hit 40+ or even 35+ then); today it may be more widespread across age ranges though as GenX is now late 40s to near 60 and it has had more time to slowly seep across generations). Back in HS (and to this day LOL!) my mom used to always say it sounded so funny to her how like my whole generation always sounded like they were asking questions or unsure of what we were saying but it was just something we picked up and didn't even think about consciously. I honestly had zero clue I was even doing it until she first mentioned it! But a lot of today really all started in the 80s, the modern tech age, modern blockbusters (OK late 70s), music videos, a lot of the slang and ways of talking (even if with some terms faded and some new slang a new elements like deep fry), etc. (although hair and styles are more like non-style hippie 70s/60s or evne pioneer times than the 80s).
Who actually talks like this except for people from LA? And why would you want to unless you are from that part of the country? Hillary from the Fresh Prince from Bel Air spoke like this first. I hear men from LA do this too, but it's people born there who speak like that.
I think it's irritating because it's a downgrade in our English language. It sounds very sloppy, all 3 types. So if you are a dinosaur then so am I. I want to preserve our English language! ❤💯
From a British point of view listening to vocal fry, upspeak on public transport or pub or resturaunt is irritating particilary when its constant and frenetic. Its suggests stupidity and lack of education. Just saying its just me.
There is no such thing as "proper" English and asserting that there is is almost inherently calling those who don't speak"proper" English dumb, but the more damming evidence is you calling an accent a "mind virus" which doesn't exactly seem like you think highly of people who use that accent
I'm not an English native speaker, but LIKE you, I think it is pretty annoying. I can't stand, for instance, listening to Kim Kardashian speaking. She sounds so presumptuous. It is not likable at all.
If you like this video, chack out my other one about how all English is Valley Girl English:
ruclips.net/video/e6phBrdChgY/видео.html
Love the video! But missed oppurtunity to say. "If you like, like this video,"
I live in Texas and was born in raised in Southern California. In the early 80's Valley girls used like the word TOTTALY MORE than any other word!
This video is a treasure .
Also your passive aggressive comedy is so enjoyable 😂
It's the only thing I can do
Thank you for this! This video helped me analyze and perform a valley girl accent successfully!
Ok, kind of the opposite of what I’m trying to accomplish here🤷🏻♂️
@@CloudEnglish😂😂😂
I wasn't gonna like, subscribe to your channellll? but like, I saw this videoooo? and I like, literally liked it so muchhhh? that I had to like, like it and subscribe to your channelllll.
Sorry for the cringe comment, couldn't help it!
omg soooo gratefulllllllll yahhhhh
sooo me like, saaame, yeah!
😂
Like are you now like love speaking it?
i didnt know what these were called and was annoyed everytime i saw an american speak like that (im an indian), thank you for clarifying what this is and also incorporating a sense of value for articulation, much respect
Thank you Man. Your comments are good on this!!!!
I'm with you 🤝❤Vocal fry...yuck, "like" is getting way over, uptalk sounds a bit moronic💨. But what is the most annoying to me is when some RUclips teachers add "Ok? Ok?" to every phrase they say. Thank you very much Luke for not doing that💖💖💖.
“Ok” doesn’t really bother me.
YAAAASSSSS. I'm so with you! I want to be a member of the elite and dwindling group of people who speak with clarity and eloquence.
It is tough though! I must admit I'm far from perfect. I don't think I use it too liberally, but pretty sure I'm dropping likes on the daily ;)
Since our dreaded/beloved smart phones listen to everything we say anyway, I'd love an app that counts your "like" bombs and lets you know, percentage wise, how you're scoring at the end of each day.
I’ve been know to drip like bombs at times as well.
Vocal fry sounds to me as " I don't really care enough to articulate"
It's would say it's less: I don't really care enough to be articulate, but USELESS information. As a southern Appalachian... We at least got a purpose to sometimes being sing-songy with pitch distinction if the "t+aspiration, d, voiced th, and voiceless th" get mixed in, we make a distinction with strict grammar, avoid repeated syllables, and just raise the vowel, not the word for the love of god.
It's annoying to deal with valley girl accent as they speak too slowly! Also confusing as every syllable either gets stressed or not here. So when listening to them, we can't tell if the said person is asking a question or not. It's like shakespeare or his relatives going into an uneducated area. You get a very much constant first syllable rhythm, then whenever these people speak it's so slow and useless creak that doesn't do anything! Danish at least takes advantage and sounds nice with the potato in mouth.
@@MaoRatto Thank you! I always thought that the accent sounded like people were always unsure of themselves; the odd, constant inflection pattern where the emphasis is placed upon the preceding adjective ("BLUE car") makes it sound like everyone's always trying to clarify something ("Which car?" "The BLUE car."). It sounds incredibly uneducated, and is very uncharacteristic of how Germanic languages typically stress words.
I picked up English conversation growing up in the valley, and it took some time to realize that Iwas doing valley speak. I eventually manage to get it under control by working on aligning my spoken English with my written English, which was much more articulate and people could actually understand what I’m trying to say without being distracted by the verbal valley distractions. It still comes out from time to time, but mostly during gossip sessions either the girls, it’s just more fun and natural to me. Although, I will admit, it really does sound like we’re airheads when you are not in the actual conversation.
Instead of saying 'like' I just replace it with 'you know'. It sounds polite and draws their attention to what you say.
Speaking as a native Southern Californian, I think that if you're over the age of 25 and cannot express yourself in a concise and articulate manner understandable to a wide audience - well, like literally go get like, help? I mean, you totally sound like, soooo lame? Fer sure!
My friend and I overheard this vocal fry in Michigan and couldn't stop laughing. My friend is an English Teacher and very articulate in her speech which I enjoy.
Quite dumb stance coming from an English teacher to laugh at a specific variety of the language. Unprofessional I would say.
Well I'm part of this club Luke lmao. I just don't enjoy how this sounds, I don't mind if people prefer this instead but I get so annoyed by how overboard these people go with "like" "y'know" "literally".
You club membership hat is on the way.
@@CloudEnglish Yay! Btw Luke I was laughing with the way you were mimicking the accent, don't be a part of the Kardashians fandom pls.
@@stefane2153 I stan kim
I think about this often… Like you, I also highly value communication and articulation.
Valley Speak - especially upspeak - contains a degree of pretension. It sounds as if the speaker is ‘talking down’ to the listener. This makes sense given that it began as an upper-class American accent
Good work
Max
What about the phenomenon of beginning every sentence with the word "So"? I hear this all the time, even people interviewing or being interviewed on TV in their "public" voice as you suggested. Even though it extends completely out of the "Valley", I remember it distinctly in the movie Clueless when "Cher"/Alicia Silverstone began her class debate argument with "So".
My voice does vocal fry naturally when I'm speaking English and I can't help it
I get a bit of vocal fry at the ends of sentences.
Same here
Thaank you for the video... like literally, so inspirationalll... m'yeah (like i am from indonesia and in our language, we have the valley style uptalk too, spoken usually my up mid class)
I am Dutch and listen to a lot of American stuff, podcasts fe. Just now I discovered there's a name for that way of speaking that I hate: vocal fry. I have stopped listening to podcasts in which the main characters speak like that, because it makes me sick. I also hate the constant interjection of the word like.
People speak like that all the time in Denmark. Idk why it makes non-Danes and non-vocal fry users so angry. It’s really not that deep
@mychannel-rt2gn it doesn't make me angry. Vocal fry is almost impossible to listen to because it makes me very uncomfortable. My stomach starts aching because of it. That's why I don't wanna listen to it.
These people are Californians and they are barely literate, so please roast it further. These folks annoy me with great anger due to one part of their lack of reading skills and one part. Can you *not* use an interjection, but this is the exact reason why I don't want them going to the bible belt, and also they got a group of splinters and call that their tongue.
I was watching 3 vloggers in their 30s i found so irritating and dumb and i just realized that they were talking like a valley girl. I'm from the Philippines btw
This. I don't want to have the "valley girl" accent (or use the "valley speak"), espeically as a grown-up bearded guy, but even my english tutor uses it. Also in many youtube videos, which are my main source of english learning.
Vocal fry! I’d never heard of it before but I knew there was something about Sam Altman’s interviews that I found totally annoying put I couldn’t put my finger on it, and that’s what it is, vocal fry. Thanks for highlighting what it actually was.
This is a shame. I'm a Spanish speaking old guy learning English. Well articulate English is so beautiful. I love watching old Americans movies only because how well English was spoken back in those days
I saw it morph in three stages in the last four decades.
It went from using "like basically, like literally" in the 1970s and 1980s as a non-verbal exclamation in verbal form when hesitating between the end of one phrase within a sentence and the next (which went across The Pond and they still use "basically" and "actually" in London and the Home Counties) - it used to be "um" but now it's "like" and other variations;
to using Upspeak (speaking every sentence or phrase as if it were a question with rising intonation on the last syllable - that one seems to have become mainstream Down Under and is sometimes called "Australian Question Intonation" (AQI), which is weird as it denotes a working class person);
to now effecting a Vocal Fry, for which I think we can thank early 21st Century reality TV people.
It's not an accent because an accent is a style. This is a fashion, not a style, and in a decade or two it'll be out of date.
"Valley Girl" by Frank Zappa is such a great example of Val-speak for those who want to hear a tongue in cheek and humorous take on it.
"Like" can be used as a small pause to gather your thoughts on the fly in a conversation.
as a european student going to a school focused on english it is hard to listen to so many people adopt this valley girl way of speaking without realizing it, some people do it more some people do it less, there are some really bad cases but the worst thing is that I see the word "like" being overused by almost everyone, even me, so my goal for the next school year is to focus on getting rid of that habit.
I had a merch idea: a collar or bracelet that delivers a low-level static shock every time specific words are used.
@@CloudEnglish could be an interesting engineering and psychology project
Agree with your analysis and comments at the end. Here in central Indiana, "Right?" is tacked on to the end of many sentences... It's like, Valley Girl English is a Mind Virus, right?
I think that is infuriating, as " Do you *not* know what syllable stress is or not? " Is the valley girl mind virus not important or not?
Normally the default would be "It's like the English valley girl mind virus, right? Specifically, I would call it "The Californian valley girl mind virus" as it's hard to understand as it's a misuse of stress to make a difference between the point or deficit in vocabulary. Also, I barely would call spoken "Californian" a part of English due to how slow, even sounding, and a bluntly illiterate without the ability to read at an eighth grade level. These people only get through class with a D.
I don't like that way of speaking. I consider that isn't how a coherent person should speak.
I learned something new about my voice by watching this video, as a gay man I use vocal fry and up speak but don't use the word like as often
Bufuing increases your vocal fries.
In "but, like"the like is an attempt to undermine the brutality of saying but which can be construed as a prelude to an aggressive, argumentative confrontation
Thanks for the video. You reminded me of a video of Joey B Toons.
Everyone I work with speaks this way. The worst part is that it causes me to start speaking like it too. It truly is a virus!
“Resistance is, like, futile.” -Valley Borg
That whole conversation in key and peele skit where one just uses okay for entire convo, is that a thing? Lol
It seems to me that this phenomenon is related to the quality of education for children and teens in the U.S. Learning how to speak articulately used to be a fundamental part of being educated and literate.
Thanks, that's so interesting ☺️
You forgot "totally" and "what everrr" 😂😂 I first heard that and the valley accent from the movie "clueless" I think this accent started to be a fancy trend way back in the 90s
Actually, it was the '80s. A great example is Whoopi Goldberg's Live on Broadway special from 1985. It's here on RUclips. One of the six (?) characters she portrays (brilliantly) is a Valley Girl. I also remember watching comedian Lois Bromfield do a Valley Girl routine at a video bar in the late '80s.
Vocal fry (at least the way it sounds now, far more extensive, much more drawn out, much sleepier, deeper) is a somewhat newer thing. The other stuff has been there since the early 80s but I think (modern) fry started becoming popular maybe around 2000? A little after that? It’s not really a part of original val speak the way say Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian do it. But like, literally used as emphasis, upspeak, etc. was already pretty much universal across US highschools by early to mid-80s, like super totally widespread nationwide. TBH, some of it was even more widespread back then than even today.
The comedy movie Idiocracy is now a tragic documentary. The next generation is regressing back to being single celled organisms.
I entirely agree with what you said in the video, but unfortunately, it seems that this is how English is evolving. I know some people of considerable intelligence (and have heard others on public radio) who misuse/overuse "like" significantly, are aware that they do it, but continue to do it nonetheless. I also have a friend who is a linguist who has counseled me to get used to it because "it is the language evolving, like it or not." I do feel, like you, that many people find it too much effort to express themselves precisely and efficiently, and those of us who do make the effort are fewer and fewer all the time. And almost any attempt to encourage others to "clean up their verbal act" gets met with resentment.
I only hear Southern Californians speak like this. Never heard anyone outside of that region of the country talk like that.
Ngl when I noticed so many valley speaks out there in tv shows and media which pretty much makes valley become modern American accent. And I was like oh my gosh I must be like quitting watching these before it form my muscle memories. Anyway I decide to speak modern rp British accent in English now
"Like" is a pause word in Valley Girl English (and increasingly contemporary English as a whole). It doesn't mean anything in this context, it's just the same as um or uh. It stands out because of course like is also a content word sometimes (as when the girl in this video used it to introduce paraphrased speech) but it's not the only content word that gets used as filler: some people say y'know, actually or basically in the same context
Influential dialects tend to emerge in waves radiating from regions with high amounts of cultural capital, for example the British Received Pronunciation, which I think it's fair to say still commands a certain prestige even in the US, is often taught to learners as standard, but it started out as a peculiar non-standard way of speaking associated with Oxbridge universities
So I would put to you, what else is in the San Fernando valley? There's a reason why the region has so much cultural capital right now
Pink’s Hot Dogs?
@@CloudEnglish lmao
If you couldn't tell I'm firmly in the camp of "it's not lazy, people just sound that way", and it is a mind virus, spread by celebrities and influencers around the world
I don't know if I agree that it's inarticulate, as with any accent you have to tune into it
What's interesting to consider is what if the backlash against it pushes English in some opposing direction - New York English? London English? Aussie English?
I grew up in that environment I still use it and its a lot of likes, my boss used to tease me lol but no vocal fry
Why i am intrigued by the valley style, is simply because English is complicated for asians like myself, observe Singaporean english, its practically chopped chopped words and put them in a sentence, we all understand clearly without the need to think, past tense rules, past perfect .... hah too confusing... and the latin adopted words aarrgh adding more complication
It's the extension of vowels and consonants that drives me nuts likkkkkkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeeee OMggggggggggggggggggg
So interesting thank you 🙏 for this info. Personally I hate This way to speak too. But I was si curious to know whyyyy? I’m English learner 🎉
I hate the question up turn at the end. But tbh I do have that crackly voice and I say like too much…idk where it came from but I never really noticed till I watched this. 😂
I do not have this regional accent or what you want to call it. Although, I still have a problem with overusing filler words. I am talking about ummm, like, and so. To sound more confident and articulate I am going to make this a long time goal to almost omit those words from my vocabulary. I appreciate the video! Speaking of the video, the accent I cannot bear to hear. I will just kindly say that.
The "F" word fit in conversation like "Like" does
Vocal Fry is the Alioth of speech. In general, it is the existential opposite of the Boston Brahmin English.
I need your thesis on why Boston is Brahmin.
It's called the California accent! My mom's side of the family is from the Appalachian mountains and those folks have a whole other English not understood by the majority of Americans!
Im the next level of this mind virus - I abuse like even during writing - good that writing is free of vocal fry or uptalk cuz im sure i would do it if possible :(
Good man. Well said. "Like" is a verb or a comparative - full stop/period. Vocal fry is unattractive (I feel, like ya know... )
Literalyspoken in an eastern European or Pubjabi accent is really funny,like it's literally, like, hysterical?
He's a man of VALUE and everyone else is like totally a like VALLEY girl? You like, see what I like did there?
lol…. This is how all southern Californian natives talk. Southern California has Hollywood. Hollywood has reality tv and movies, hence the entire world now thinks the way natives have spoken their entire life is something they can change. Most Californians, especially SoCal cannot fix the way they speak, similar of someone from North Carolina or Texas. Should it be taught, no. It’s a cultural thing and us natives do not even know we speak this way until we go to another state or location and someone points this out to us. I think it’s strange that other states would teach this accent, as I would not want to be taught to speak another accent unless it was for a job. It is a very difficult accent to break, as someone who speaks valley, I have tried to fix it. I cannot lol so I stay true to who I am and where I come from. Others can take it or leave it. But the Kardashians literally are from the valley and speak like everyone born and raised in most of SoCal.
As a native, this is not how we all speak.
In Germany, the majority of the people can speak in at least two modalities: local accent and standard German which are mutually intelligeable to a native speaker in most cases of accents. If you have a trained ear you'll still know where they grew up even if they speak standard German. If you want to sound authentic you use your native accent, if you want to be recognised as professional you`ll use the standard German accent.
German accents vary as much and are as thick as British accents.
Language is a construct that's always changing. There is no "correct" way to speak it, only ways that people (usually privileged groups) have arbitrarily said is correct. This is just criticizing an accent and saying "back in my day we said more words to make the same point".
100%. But that “back in my day” type of opinion is part of the overall zeitgeist, which may, even to a tiny tiny degree, tilt the axis. I’m advocating my position, as everyone should.
@@CloudEnglish Advocating for one does not does not have to mean devaluing the other. Of course conventional speaking is more useful in professional settings like your teaching environment, but informal speak can bring frivolity and fun to the right social context like the videos you sampled.
There isn't just one axis. These two styles occupy niches as far apart as it gets and they both bring value to their respective context. Neither are worthy of the connotation of "mind virus".
Been trying to figure out why I can’t stand the way some people talk. Now I know why. Upspeak sounds whiny and self inflating. Vocal Fry is “like” static on the radio, and injecting like between every word makes us all sound stupid.
Just read the comments, and there's so much negativity and controversy that I'm like-can't people understand languages are literally flexible and adaptable along with like-the people that actually use them?
Greetings from Ukraine.
It has to be tied to peoples sense of security. Everyone who speaks like this seems insecure, example Katie Hobbs scared to debate kari Lake
And Ivanka Trump and Elisabeth Holmes as well. But in those cases they want to convey sincerity and authority. Fortunately, it is completely artificial and way overdone and easy to detect.
I wanna be so relaxed that I forgot I had a bottom jaw 😮💨 I'm like, sooo jealous 🥱
I think a lot of you have warped and nasty reasons for hating vocal fry. It’s not harmful to the vocal cords, in contradiction to the misinformation people love spreading, and it doesn’t make someone unintelligent.
It’s perfectly normal and sometimes even necessary to use vocal fry when speaking Danish and the Danes haven’t experienced a mass loss of our voices because of this, and I don’t think Danes sound unintelligent.
Tagging Kim Kardashian shows that you have ulterior and outright hateful motives for disliking vocal fry and making this video as a whole.
Valley girls and the way they speak aren’t hurting anyone find something else to be mad about, this isn’t the 80’s anymore.
I hope there’s something where the kardashians aren’t into
English teaching influencer in Asian are promoting this way of speaking as "sounding more natural and like native speaker"
Interesting. What do you think about that?
@@CloudEnglish I first called this accent "Disney/sitcom accent" without knowing its origin. After looking into different videos (including yours), now I understand that it is a local accent which grows more and more popular.
While the belief that valley girl accent "sounds more native" is not factually correct, it is so convincing in my country (& most asian countries)
Obviously the origin of this accent is not taught in English class for asian student.
Secondly, we are exposed to English language mostly via foreign media (for example, disney channel, sitcom, block buster movies, etc.). In my country, English teachers (who are mostly females) advices student to watch movies such as How I met your mother, FRIENDS, etc. to improve listening & learn how to speak naturally.
Thirdly, this valley girl accent sounds VERY DIFFERENT to ears of Asian people (almost as if the speaker becomes a completely different person from his/her Asian origin). That's why it is the cool thing among Asian community. Asian parent praises their kids for sounding as foreign as possible. People like this accent even more that correct pronunciation. Some even express dislike to their local Asian accent in speaking English (saying that its sounds dumb, unlike native speakers, etc.). The issue is similar to the trend of asian students making a foreign name when studying abroad.
There is a big debate on my country;s social media about vocal fry/valley girl accent at the moment (which makes me want to learn more about it). The current situation is that proponents for vocal fry outweight the opponents by miles.
@@plainseed This is a fantastic analysis. I thought I was the only human left on the planet thinking seriously about this trend. Great to know there are at least two of us.
In fact, I do not oppose this way of speaking. Who am I to tell people how to speak? I'm just some dude on RUclips.
However, I think it's important to make people aware that 'native' is a very broad category, and there are many ways to 'sound native'. The reason I call it a mind virus is that it seems to be adopted globally without resistance. And the reason it is adopted globally without resistance is that it is very easy to adopt. It is a low-effort way to communicate.
In my view, the right way to think about it is to simply ask yourself: "What kind of impression do I want to make when I speak?" We ask ourselves this kind of question when we get dressed, or buy a car; why wouldn't we do the same for the way we speak?
It's at least worth considering a secondary mode of articulate speech for those times when "valley girl" could create the impression that you just can't be bothered.
Yeah the more I think about it, the sort of vocal fry discussed in this video and a few other similar videos by others, really isn't Valley Girl. No Valley Girl ever sounded like the kids in those clips near the start. That said all the other stuff about like and literally and so on is true val speak. Just the deep extended grinding fry all over the place is something different. So it is true to an extent that everyone is Valley Girl now because of all of the likes and the like (!) and upspeak but the Kardashian fry (maybe better called Hilton fry since hers seems more extreme and getting closer to those kids or what you sometimes hear around today) is an entirely different aspect that has taken over and is not really quite like val speak even if some of them did sometimes use a bit of fry.
I might call this video Kardashian/Hilton Speak or Millennial Mangled Valley Speak or SoCal 2.0 Speak. The super extended, hyper long, deep fry thing some do now and that you show in the first two clips in this video are like sooo totally not at all what the Valley Girls sounded like or like what you'd hear if you went to high school in the 80s, anywhere. The real Valley Girls just did not sound like that, much less the average person in other parts of the nation in the 80s (where the accent part of it tended to often be much weaker). I did not hear that in high school or at the mall in the 80s. This sort of extreme fry speaking came like almost two decades after val speak.
I believe the super strong, really deep, sleepy, really drawnout, every word, extreme vocal fry that was popularized by Paris Hilton around the very end of the 90s/super early 00s?? She is a mix of non-Valley rich LA and rich Upper East Side NYC upbringing. I think Kim Kardashian picked it up from her and then was the one who really, really, really spread it?? But K.K. is not and never was an OG Valley Girl. She is the wrong generation and lived in the wrong location.
The true Valley Girls were early GenX of SFV/richer parts of Encino and val speak was spread across the nation by early to late mid-GenX. I don't recall hearing people talking like Paris Hilton in high school in the 80s in CA, NJ, MA or anywhere. Some of those with the full on full Valley Girl accent in the 80s did have some fry at times, but I believe it was usually much shorter and less drawn out (many times just a fraction of a second), often only used at the very last word of a phrase, used less often in general, often maintained the same pitch, sometimes even going higher and squeaky, quick and energetic, rather than the long, slow, sleepy deep fry of Hilton (and sometimes Kardashian) and that you hear today. At least to my ears, it seemed so different in the extent and the ways in which it was carried out compared to what I often hear today, that I feel it would be more accurate to consider it to be something entirely different.
In most of the country, I don't think much of the super full on Valley accent really spread around universally beyond the barest trace as sort of a generic 80s accent and those who did retain it more strongly still generally had it in more muted form outside of that region. Super widespread in full was the spread of much of the slang along with a few patterns of speech like some extended vowels and upspeak and occasionally usage of heavier bits of the accent by some at times. That said, sometimes for certain phrases it wasn't that rare to hear full on Valley Girl accent like for "totally bitchin'", sometimes you could hear that getting almost Moon Zappa in Valley Girl level strongly Val accented and sometimes you could hear some SoCal surfer dude accent to a degree at select times from some people all over.
Valley Girl was a GenX creation (although some of the terms date back farther to prior gens).
The extreme, sleepy, constant, deep vocal fry is more of a late Xennial/early Millennial creation. That along with bro and some other slang didn't spread out until almost two decades after Valley Girl did.
(Side note, I see some Gen Z and Millennials hold up Clueless in their videos as a prime example of Valley Girl but that came out over a decade later and featured a lot of new sayings like "as if" that were not around at all when the Valley Girls did their thing.)
All the oh my god, dude, like, totally, soooo totally, awesome, literally used purposefully as an extreme emphasizer, stoked, wicked, gnarly, rad, bitchin' (although these last two seem to be used less today in many areas), gnarly, you know, dragged out vowels at times, upspeak, are all 80s slang/ways of speaking, mostly to all derived from Valley Girl/SoCal surfer/skater (some of terms like tubular, grody and especially gag me with a spoon didn't really get widespread usage across most parts of the country though even back then much less today), some of that stuff was even far more prevalent back then than even today (at least among middle school/HS/college crowd, it hadn't hit 40+ or even 35+ then); today it may be more widespread across age ranges though as GenX is now late 40s to near 60 and it has had more time to slowly seep across generations). Back in HS (and to this day LOL!) my mom used to always say it sounded so funny to her how like my whole generation always sounded like they were asking questions or unsure of what we were saying but it was just something we picked up and didn't even think about consciously. I honestly had zero clue I was even doing it until she first mentioned it!
But a lot of today really all started in the 80s, the modern tech age, modern blockbusters (OK late 70s), music videos, a lot of the slang and ways of talking (even if with some terms faded and some new slang a new elements like deep fry), etc. (although hair and styles are more like non-style hippie 70s/60s or evne pioneer times than the 80s).
"Like" and subscribe. Like, literally, "Like"
Who actually talks like this except for people from LA? And why would you want to unless you are from that part of the country?
Hillary from the Fresh Prince from Bel Air spoke like this first. I hear men from LA do this too, but it's people born there who speak like that.
I don't like 'Val'. Definitely a trend. I use it when I purposely want to make my speech sound mindless.
Yas 👏
Me too, actually
HATE that way of speaking.
I think it's irritating because it's a downgrade in our English language. It sounds very sloppy, all 3 types. So if you are a dinosaur then so am I. I want to preserve our English language! ❤💯
Like yo bro dude like - It was heavy in the 1990s.
From a British point of view listening to vocal fry, upspeak on public transport or pub or resturaunt is irritating particilary when its constant and frenetic. Its suggests stupidity and lack of education. Just saying its just me.
The croaky voice thing is annoying and seems popular with gay men.
Is generally the women way of speaking a role model for gays? My observation would confirm this. But why would that be? I am really stumped here.
Guys speaking "valley" is so feminine and flamboyant.
There is no such thing as "proper" English and asserting that there is is almost inherently calling those who don't speak"proper" English dumb, but the more damming evidence is you calling an accent a "mind virus" which doesn't exactly seem like you think highly of people who use that accent
This is related to a dumbing down in most cases.
It is so annoying.
Like and subscribe?
I'm not an English native speaker, but LIKE you, I think it is pretty annoying. I can't stand, for instance, listening to Kim Kardashian speaking. She sounds so presumptuous. It is not likable at all.
It's merely a vain, self-obsessed, pretentious need for attention, until the next fad arises.
They speak like there is something in their mouth.
These things are annoying .!!
To me vocal fry sounds like smug.
Sam Altman's vocal fry is unbearable
浮夸的装腔作势
I hate it.
This is disturbing!
Annoying
PLEASE DON'T TEACH IT 🙏🙏🙏🙏