Why Britney loves a fry-up
QUESTION Why do many young female American voices sound so croaky?
THIS phenomenon is called vocal fry — because it sounds like frying bacon. it’s a way for Millennials, girls and boys, to signify they are part of an ‘in crowd’. it has become an increasingly habitual manner of speaking which, like all things American, has crept into British culture.
Vocal fry was popularised by pop stars in the Noughties such as Katy Perry, Rihanna, Britney spears and Kesha. The archetype is Britney’s hit Baby One More Time, where she sings ‘Oh baby, baby’ using vocal fry.
Vocal fry has historically been used as a trick by male baritone singers to sing bass. it went by various names such as ‘glottal scrape’ or ‘click’ ‘croak’ or ‘creaky’ voice. it’s achieved by squeezing the vocal [arytenoid] cartilages together. This allows the vocal cords to be loose and floppy. When air passes between them, they vibrate irregularly, causing the croak. in the classical world, fry is a sign of an unskilled singer.
Vocal fry’s migration into everyday speech falls into the category of a learned behaviour, it’s cognate with the adoption of inner city-slang and the upward glide at the end of a sentence.
Valerie Timmins, Bath, Somerset.
QUESTION In Victorian times, who were the Banner Ladies?
BANNER Ladies, once jokingly described as human billboards, first became popular in 1870s America. They were young women recruited to advertise local businesses by wearing the items they sold. They might be dressed in bread and pretzels to advertise a bakery, flowers to promote a florist’s or cutlery and scissors on behalf of a hardware store.
There was no limit to the advertisers’ creativity as they dressed women in chairs, carpets, lightbulbs and horseshoes.
One woman was decorated with 16 hand-painted shaving mugs by a pottery designer, one wore a collection of starched collars to advertise a laundry and another sported a camera as a hat to endorse a photography studio. A jewellery store asked its Banner Lady to wear a clock on her head.
The women would carry signs bearing the name and address of the store they were working for. The craze, which arose because it saved stores the expense of buying more permanent advertising space, spread across the Atlantic to europe.
The Banner Ladies would be photographed in their extravagant outfits and copies of the pictures circulated as cabinet cards, the collection of which was a novelty in an era when many depicted famous actresses and courtesans.
The Banner Lady phenomenon lasted 20 or 30 years before being overshadowed by the growing popularity of picture postcards but, even today, the word banner is still used to describe the click-inducing advertising found on websites.
Ian MacDonald, Billericay, Essex.
QUESTION If you sent a letter in 19thcentury London, could you expect a reply within two hours?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, this must have been the case at one time. i have postcards sent to and from my grandmother in the early 1900s before World War i. They were written and posted in the morning to say, ‘see you for tea at 4 o’clock this afternoon’.
Mavis Watling, Sittingbourne, Kent.
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