'Aegyo': How Adults Make Their Voices Sound More Childlike

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Anyone who wants to appear especially cute apparently also makes their voice sound smaller. A new study involving the University of Zurich shows how adults alter their voices when using aegyo, a speaking style that is widespread in South Korea. This content was published on September 12, 2026 - 12:25 2 minutes Keystone-SDA

Deutsch de “Aegyo”: Wie Erwachsene ihre Stimme kindlicher machen Original Read more:“Aegyo”: Wie Erwachsene ihre Stimme kindlicher m

Aegyo refers to a deliberately childlike, playful way of speaking that adults use, particularly in romantic situations, to come across as cuter and more endearing. K-pop stars, too, frequently adopt this style of speech at the request of their fans.

But what actually makes a voice“cute”? Phonetician Volker Dellwo from the University of Zurich and Ji-eun Kim from Duksung Women's University in South Korea have investigated this question.“I'm fundamentally interested in how people adapt their voices to different social situations, conveying not only linguistic content but also something about themselves and their relationship with the person they're speaking to,” Dellwo told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA.

For the study, 12 Korean men and women aged 25-31 read the same text once with and once without aegyo. The researchers found a striking change, as they report in the journal JASA Express Letters: when using aegyo, the voice changes acoustically in such a way that it resembles a shorter vowel tract – a characteristic that contributes to more childlike voices. Adults may thus be able to acoustically mimic a smaller vocal tract.

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