A reader makes a good & interesting point:

“Derb—I want to share with you an observation regarding the twins that I

haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere yet.

“I agree that the Bush girls are comely, and charming enough to get away

with the most cringe-inducing lines last night (if only just); but for me,

the voices would make them just a touch harder to take over the long

run…and these voices are a puzzle, too. Didn’t these girls grow up in

Texas? Where’s the drawl? (If it’s there, it’s faint enough that this

resident of Georgia doesn’t notice it.)

“This is actually one of my pet curiosities (#362, if I remember correctly):

When did the voices of American young women get to be so universally,

gratingly, nasally flat, all across the country? And why? Who stole away the

huskier voices, the rounded deep-southern tones…the ability to use any

vocal range and inflection at all?”

This reader is correct. My 11-yr-old daughter sounds exactly like every

other 11-yr-old American female. There is, in fact, a very distinctive

American-female voice developing. It’s the “Valley girl” voice basically –

even though the Valley in question is 3,000 miles from where my daughter

grew up.

In some oriental languages (Japanese notably) there are distinctive phonetic

nuances, vocabulary items, and even grammatical styles peculiar to women.

(There is some of this in all languages, I think. Prof. Jones, in his

classic book on English phonetics, notes that English women are much more

likely than men to give the “full” pronunciation to the “wh” sound. Men

mostly just collapse it to a “w,” but women give it the full “hw” treatment.

You especially hear this in older British movies.) Seems to me that

American English may be drifting in this direction.