Why do gays talk the way they do

The main ones being: The first of what we recognize today as typical aesthetics of gay behaviour originated in California where valley speak was more common. With an internal cause a dead-end scientists started to look at external environmental factors and found something quite interesting.

Young people emulate peers. Mr Brown explained: 'One study found straight men would speak more stereotypically masculine to strangers than to people they were comfortable with. Mr Brown concluded the clip by saying it was critical to remember that observed differences in straight and homosexual voices were overall trends and would naturally vary by individual.

Mr Moffit said one of his favourite studies on the subject was one on gay YouTubers which found after they came out, listeners would find them sounding increasingly gay over time. However, studies to explore the theory found no evidence of this with gay men producing just as much testosterone as heterosexual ones.

There are a lot of factors. Mr Brown also highlighted a specific way the 's' sound seemed to be spoken amongst gay men. The pair also recently discussed the phenomenon of 'gay face' and if people, and AI, could tell if a person is gay or lesbian based on the physical characteristics of their face.

High pitched, extended vowels and incredibly articulated, so-called 'gay voice' is a real phenomenon, researchers say. What is. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. As Mr Brown explains: 'This has led to a theory that sounding gay is an adaptation of gay men to allow others around them to know that they are in fact gay.

He added some studies had also found gay men who expressed a dislike for 'sounding gay' deliberately changed their speech. Studies, however, have shown homosexual men don't have an increased rate of lisps than their straight counterparts. They found that analysis comparing the pitch of straight and homosexual men's voices found key differences in how they speak.

Stock image. While the pair said some research had been done on lesbian voices, such studies were far fewer than those in gay men and while experts had found some differences these weren't as distinct as those among homosexual men. These findings, taken as whole, gave rise to the hypothesis that gay voice, rather than an innate way of speaking, is a form of social signalling.

Gay male speech has been the focus of numerous modern stereotypes, as well as sociolinguistic studies, particularly within North American English. Studies have shown that people can tell the difference between a gay man and a straight man just by their voice.

Mr Brown added: 'Gay men were also found to have longer vowel durations for "a", "i", and "u" — they hold these vowels longer in general when they speak compared to straight men. (But not bisexuals.) But why? But one key observed difference between the sexualities was that straight men are more likely to mumble and slur their words compared to gay men who were more articulate.

As such its context dependent and can be muted or changed entirely if a person doesn't want to send out that signal. Mr Moffit said gay men would also change their voice but in different contexts. High pitched, extended vowels and incredibly articulated: so-called 'gay voice' is a real phenomenon, researchers say.

It turns out both gay and straight men change how they sound based on who was listening. They want to know how men acquire this manner of speaking, and why – especially when society so often stigmatizes those with gay-sounding voices. One interesting aspect of these pitch analyses was that the results weren't language specific and were replicated across English, French and Dutch.

Mr Moffit explained: 'Results find that gay men speak with higher pitch variation meaning that their range from low to high is much more extreme than straight men. Mitch Moffit, a biologist, and Greg Brown, a science teacher — who are both gay — explored what exactly constitutes a 'gay voice' and what might cause it.

After identifying phonetic characteristics that seem to make a man’s voice sound gay, their best hunch is that some gay men may subconsciously adopt certain female speech patterns. He continued: 'Straight men would lower their voice when speaking in leadership roles when giving orders or commands.

So, the theory went that gay men weren't, for whatever reason, getting as much testosterone as straight men, leading to a different sounding voice. When volunteers were given samples of these men's voices to listen to, these gay men were more likely to be identified as straight, showing in principle 'gay voice' was able to be modified.

Two science YouTubers have scoured studies behind the theory that homosexual men have a unique twang that transcends aspects like culture and upbringing. These initial findings sparked theories that 'gay voice' was linked to hormones, specifically the male sex hormone testosterone.

He highlighted how this is contrary to the so-called 'gay lisp', a perceived quality of gay men's speech where they misarticulate the 's' sound as 'th'. More recent research has discovered both gay and straight men change how they sound based on who was listening, and what they wanted to project to these groups.

Gay men have a stereotypical voice. Sorta. Testosterone performs a variety of functions in the body, and specifically for the voice, deepens it during male puberty.