How is there so much variation in peoples voices to the point that we don’t regularly encounter strangers who sound like people we know?

Question

I can walk around all day and not encounter a voice of someone who sounds like someone else I know, yet if I was facing away from someone I knew and heard their voice, I’d likely turn around at the sound of it. There are times where I’ll see faces and think they look like someone I know, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought to myself or commented to someone that they sound like someone I know. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone who’s voice sounds like a celebrity that I’d recognize, unless they’re doing an intentional impression.

Does the brain not seek out similar voices in the same way it may faces? Is the brain able to identify people that distinctly that it can remember their exact voice pattern and discern it from others?

In: 124

Answer 1

The way people sound is not just down to their voice but also to the way they talk, the language, the accent, the enunciation, their vocabulary etc. That means that you’ve probably heard people with similar or identical voices but didn’t realise it since they spoke differently. This is something that becomes apparent when people are doing imitations, where even if their voice is off if they’re copying another person’s way of speech accurately they end up sounding like them a lot, or with singing where people generally tend to try to imitate the song exactly as sung by the original performer, even if that means assuming a different accent.

I for example, have come across 3-4 instances of people who speak and sound exactly like others I know. I know it’s anecdotal but it’s definitely possible. Their voices were similar but more specifically the way they spoke was identical. Their mouth shape was the same and the way they pronounced words and how their mouth and lips moved was the same, so they sounded the same. It’s also noteworthy that they usually also had similar height and build though that’s less important. Ans it’s uncanny because when two people sound exactly the same it feels as if they also look the same even though if you really look you can see they don’t except for their mouths.