Listening to
this song
made me wonder, are Slavic languages getting deeper? When the first
woman sings, the first thing that came to my mind is "Oh my God, what a
hick!". The second woman sings and I think: "Pfft...city girl, but
barely". The third girl gives me more or less the same feeling as the
first.
Now I realize South Slavs have, by comparrison, exceptionally deep,
low-pitch languages compared to our northern cousins. But I find,
listening to music from other regions and seeing their interviews on
the news, television shows, and all these sorts of things - our
languages are getting deeper.
You hear the high-pitch, nasal accent in Bosnia and you immediately
associate that voice with a woman who is easily 60 years old. You hear
a deep, raspy voice that people in the West would think of a
70-year-old smoker instantly, I think of a beautiful 30 year old.
I notice with Ukrainian music I hear that it tends to be deeper when
singing and still fairly high pitch when spoken, Russian seems to have
the same differences for age and rural/urban that Bosnia does, but
their differences are set an octave higher.
Do you think it's actually changing? Could there have been a Donna Ares
or a Colonia 100 years ago, or would they all have been a Lily Galic
and a Selma Bajrami?