6 ms·

Man's Voice Reveals His Fighting Ability

33 points by liamk 16y ago

losvedir 16y ago
Offtopic, but from the article: "'When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow.' This sentence includes every sound in the English language." I see immediately it seems to lack the "oo" of food, so I don't think that's quite right. I would be very interested to see what an actual sentence is that does have all the sounds.
- a-priori 16y ago
  Also the hard "G" sound, as in "Gift".
- WilliamLP 16y ago
  "ch"? "ng"? "g"? "h" (aspirated)? "j"? "o" as in "open"? "q"? "zh" as in "cashmere"? "v"? "w" (as in "wet")? "y" as in "you"?
- jambo 16y ago
  That sentence is the beginning of "The Rainbow Passage", which is considerably longer and meant to be a good sampling of English phonemes. http://web.ku.edu/~idea/readings/rainbow.htm http://web.ku.edu/~idea/readings/rainbow.htm http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml#Rainbow http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml#Rainbow "The Rainbow Passage is one of the most common standard reading passages used to test an individual's ability to produce connected speech. Like the My Grandfather passage it is used in speech evaluations, but it is also used in studying accents, reading comprehension, as a speech exercise, and for testing language recognition software." from http://everything2.com/user/Tem42/writeups/The+Rainbow+Passage http://everything2.com/user/Tem42/writeups/The+Rainbow+Passa...
- aswanson 16y ago
  Also missing the long "e" vowel sound.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  Here you go: "When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow of food."
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    upgraded with other reportedly missing sounds: "When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow of good-eatin' food." I'm hungry.
dabent 16y ago
Mike Tyson may be the exception to this rule.
- angstrom 16y ago
  Outlier...on many levels.
  - ibejoeb 16y ago
    Tyson is exceptional, certainly. Rick Astley, David Beckham... I don't know. I'd read the paper if it surfaces.
- moolave 16y ago
  Although he could pack a Phil Collins drum roll punch.
- zavulon 16y ago
  I've read somewhere that his voice actually was actually one of the reasons for him becoming a boxer. He was bullied in school for his lisp, and in order to stand up to them and take up boxing.
  - aantix 16y ago
    Yep. He was made fun of and was afraid to fight at first. But then, apparently Tyson owned pigeons as a kid. Some guy from his neighborhood took a pigeon and said to him "You want your pigeon back?", and then proceeded to pop the pigeon's head off. Tyson then proceeded to beat the shit out of him (~6 mins into the documentary). He was also so scared during his first amateur match that he thought about grabbing a train and leaving (minutes before the fight). Watch "Tyson" on Netflix (streaming). He tells his life story, first person. Surprisingly moving and not a sensationalized account like you'd expect. http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Tyson/70100412?trkid=1211018 http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Tyson/70100412?trkid=1211018
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
rokhayakebe 16y ago
Ok, this may explain why women want to talk on the phone before going out with the guy. Good thing we have SMS.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
  It's not just women who do that. I always talked to women I met online before meeting them in person. You get a lot more from conversation (like: can the person even hold one!) than you do from email. Sometimes after that talk you decide you don't want to bother! Just curious: have you ever done that? Met someone in person without talking to them first?
  - rokhayakebe 16y ago
    Once I did. Met her on Facebook. Message, message, message then asked her out. Worked. Other than that I have not. But I never call women I met. It is either email or SMS. I try to avoid anything real time unless we are in the same place so you can read my body language.
settrans 16y ago
Can we please keep these fact-free pseudoscience articles off HN? Particularly those lacking a link to the original source or even the title of the paper.
- billswift 16y ago
  It's not a total loss, I have added another author to my list of sources to generally avoid. (Did you click on the author's name? - instead of a profile it leads to a list of articles - and they all look to be this same sort of silly nonsense.)
blintson 16y ago
If conveying that information in your voice is useful, it's also very useful to be able to fake it. I lifted weights in high school, went wakeboarding with people and (briefly) went to an MMA gym. I've met skinny people with deep voices and ripped people with high voices and vice versa. I wasn't able to find a link to the original study, but I think they're completely wrong, and the correlation is nonexistent or negligible.
- milkshakes 16y ago
  The article implies that there's more to it than pitch: Sell and his colleagues could not precisely pinpoint what qualities in a man's voice indicate strength.
spoonboy 16y ago
Original source: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/14/rspb.2010.0769.full.pdf http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06...
- Robin_Message 16y ago
  Thanks. It bugs me when people post the probably wrong journalistic summary when the paper is only 10 pages anyway!
haily 16y ago
This reminds me of a loud chihuahua and quite pitbull.
astartup1 16y ago
If this continues imagine Olympic few years down the line. Just send your health reports and voice samples. We will do analysis and declare winners.
rmundo 16y ago
It ought to be fascinating to find out if such vocal characteristics changes over time with upper body strength in the same person (for instance, putting them through a six month strength training program). Or if this is somehow set at puberty, and people's relative strength remained the same over most of their lives. I would imagine most people don't suddenly acquire an urge to become stronger after they reach their thirties. Or at least they didn't while humans were evolving.
MarkBook 16y ago
Margaret Thatcher had voice training to make her sound more authoritive. Here are 2 clips the first from 1975 and the second from 1987. They don't sound a whole lot different to me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK3eP9rh4So http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK3eP9rh4So http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vIt9lRzuFE&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vIt9lRzuFE&feature=relat...
samratjp 16y ago
Ah, if this is really true as it claims, I am sure in the days of remote work, someone is probably working on a Skype plugin for deeper voice.
julius_geezer 16y ago
Men's voices tend to deepen over time. Almost thirty years later, I remember the simply awful sound of the Beach Boys (upper 30s? early 40s?) trying to sing in the keys they used at 20. Could the middle-aged BBs have thrashed the twenty-something BBs? (No, I didn't pay for a concert ticket--they were on the radio from the Mall on 4th of July.)
GBond 16y ago
How does the research quantify "Fighting Ability" (hand-eye, violent nature, inherent strength)? Does muscle development through intense training change the voice?
codahale 16y ago
Awesome. A journal article authored by people who don't know how to fight, summarized by a person who doesn't know how to fight or do basic science.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

33 points by liamk 16y ago

Offtopic, but from the article: "'When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow.' This sentence includes every sound in the English language." I see immediately it seems to lack the "oo" of food, so I don't think that's quite right. I would be very interested to see what an actual sentence is that does have all the sounds.

a-priori 16y ago
Also the hard "G" sound, as in "Gift".
WilliamLP 16y ago
"ch"? "ng"? "g"? "h" (aspirated)? "j"? "o" as in "open"? "q"? "zh" as in "cashmere"? "v"? "w" (as in "wet")? "y" as in "you"?
jambo 16y ago
That sentence is the beginning of "The Rainbow Passage", which is considerably longer and meant to be a good sampling of English phonemes. http://web.ku.edu/~idea/readings/rainbow.htm http://web.ku.edu/~idea/readings/rainbow.htm http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml#Rainbow http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml#Rainbow "The Rainbow Passage is one of the most common standard reading passages used to test an individual's ability to produce connected speech. Like the My Grandfather passage it is used in speech evaluations, but it is also used in studying accents, reading comprehension, as a speech exercise, and for testing language recognition software." from http://everything2.com/user/Tem42/writeups/The+Rainbow+Passage http://everything2.com/user/Tem42/writeups/The+Rainbow+Passa...
aswanson 16y ago
Also missing the long "e" vowel sound.
mkramlich 16y ago
Here you go: "When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow of food."
- mkramlich 16y ago
  upgraded with other reportedly missing sounds: "When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow of good-eatin' food." I'm hungry.

dabent 16y ago

Mike Tyson may be the exception to this rule.

angstrom 16y ago
Outlier...on many levels.
- ibejoeb 16y ago
  Tyson is exceptional, certainly. Rick Astley, David Beckham... I don't know. I'd read the paper if it surfaces.
moolave 16y ago
Although he could pack a Phil Collins drum roll punch.
zavulon 16y ago
I've read somewhere that his voice actually was actually one of the reasons for him becoming a boxer. He was bullied in school for his lisp, and in order to stand up to them and take up boxing.
- aantix 16y ago
  Yep. He was made fun of and was afraid to fight at first. But then, apparently Tyson owned pigeons as a kid. Some guy from his neighborhood took a pigeon and said to him "You want your pigeon back?", and then proceeded to pop the pigeon's head off. Tyson then proceeded to beat the shit out of him (~6 mins into the documentary). He was also so scared during his first amateur match that he thought about grabbing a train and leaving (minutes before the fight). Watch "Tyson" on Netflix (streaming). He tells his life story, first person. Surprisingly moving and not a sensationalized account like you'd expect. http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Tyson/70100412?trkid=1211018 http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Tyson/70100412?trkid=1211018
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago

rokhayakebe 16y ago

Ok, this may explain why women want to talk on the phone before going out with the guy. Good thing we have SMS.

HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
It's not just women who do that. I always talked to women I met online before meeting them in person. You get a lot more from conversation (like: can the person even hold one!) than you do from email. Sometimes after that talk you decide you don't want to bother! Just curious: have you ever done that? Met someone in person without talking to them first?
- rokhayakebe 16y ago
  Once I did. Met her on Facebook. Message, message, message then asked her out. Worked. Other than that I have not. But I never call women I met. It is either email or SMS. I try to avoid anything real time unless we are in the same place so you can read my body language.

settrans 16y ago

Can we please keep these fact-free pseudoscience articles off HN? Particularly those lacking a link to the original source or even the title of the paper.

billswift 16y ago
It's not a total loss, I have added another author to my list of sources to generally avoid. (Did you click on the author's name? - instead of a profile it leads to a list of articles - and they all look to be this same sort of silly nonsense.)

blintson 16y ago

If conveying that information in your voice is useful, it's also very useful to be able to fake it. I lifted weights in high school, went wakeboarding with people and (briefly) went to an MMA gym. I've met skinny people with deep voices and ripped people with high voices and vice versa. I wasn't able to find a link to the original study, but I think they're completely wrong, and the correlation is nonexistent or negligible.

milkshakes 16y ago
The article implies that there's more to it than pitch: Sell and his colleagues could not precisely pinpoint what qualities in a man's voice indicate strength.

spoonboy 16y ago

Original source: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/14/rspb.2010.0769.full.pdf http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06...

Robin_Message 16y ago
Thanks. It bugs me when people post the probably wrong journalistic summary when the paper is only 10 pages anyway!

haily 16y ago

This reminds me of a loud chihuahua and quite pitbull.

astartup1 16y ago

If this continues imagine Olympic few years down the line. Just send your health reports and voice samples. We will do analysis and declare winners.

rmundo 16y ago

It ought to be fascinating to find out if such vocal characteristics changes over time with upper body strength in the same person (for instance, putting them through a six month strength training program). Or if this is somehow set at puberty, and people's relative strength remained the same over most of their lives. I would imagine most people don't suddenly acquire an urge to become stronger after they reach their thirties. Or at least they didn't while humans were evolving.

MarkBook 16y ago

Margaret Thatcher had voice training to make her sound more authoritive. Here are 2 clips the first from 1975 and the second from 1987. They don't sound a whole lot different to me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK3eP9rh4So http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK3eP9rh4So http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vIt9lRzuFE&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vIt9lRzuFE&feature=relat...

samratjp 16y ago

Ah, if this is really true as it claims, I am sure in the days of remote work, someone is probably working on a Skype plugin for deeper voice.

julius_geezer 16y ago

Men's voices tend to deepen over time. Almost thirty years later, I remember the simply awful sound of the Beach Boys (upper 30s? early 40s?) trying to sing in the keys they used at 20. Could the middle-aged BBs have thrashed the twenty-something BBs? (No, I didn't pay for a concert ticket--they were on the radio from the Mall on 4th of July.)

GBond 16y ago

How does the research quantify "Fighting Ability" (hand-eye, violent nature, inherent strength)? Does muscle development through intense training change the voice?

codahale 16y ago

Awesome. A journal article authored by people who don't know how to fight, summarized by a person who doesn't know how to fight or do basic science.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]