Thai pitch

[phuketsub]

I was reading through the other thread about the origins of the word อังกฤษ and it reminded me of a theory I once heard about 25 years ago from an old English guy (sadly now deceased) who my mentor when I moved over here.

His theory was that Thai is so high-pitched compared to more guttural languages (like English and German) because it 'evolved' to be screamed across rice fields.

He was very serious about it, but I don't know how anyone could ever prove such a thing.

However, I don't think there is no doubting that Thai is a lot higher pitched than English.

You can tall any time a Thai guy starts 'pretending' to be speaking like a farang, he goes into a 'bassetto' (just made this word up; I just mean it's like the upside down version of 'falsetto')

The all-time best example of this is, of course, the Carabao song Welcome to Thailand.

(required listening for newbies!)

I have a deep bass voice and when it gets too loud, like in a nightclub, I just give up trying to speak, by my Thai friends can pierce right through it.

At the risk of sounding racist, I also wonder if there could be some genetic factors in play here.

Anyway, just wondering what the community makes of my late friend's theory...