ABSTRACT
The melody has a more expanded pitch range than American English and women with strong accents tend to speak at a higher pitch. Follow the "musical notes" up and down to get a feel for the melody of the accent. Bianca's accent is an excellent example of contemporary twenty-something Afrikaans speakers. Bianca's pattern of speaking illustrates the tendency of twenty-somethings to break away from the more classic lift in pitch and lengthening of the vowel at the end of a thought. Because of the lift in the middle of the tongue, the resonance is focused toward the middle of the hard palate and into the cheekbones. Greg's resonance is quite clearly along these lines, while Jakob's resonance is not quite as brightly focused. Because women tend to speak at a higher pitch than men, their resonance rises up from the cheekbones and is lidded at the "metal disk" area at the temples.
