When I'm speaking another language, I tend to speak at a lower pitch. In French (my second language and the one I use most often) it drops a little bit, not very noticeable. I lose access to the higher pitch that I use in English for casual-young-female and customer-service-perky, but I'm mostly within a natural range. But by the time we get to Polish (my fifth language, the one I speak worst of the language I can even remotely claim to speak, and also the one that's least similar to English) my entire register drops a whole octave and I can't even reach my normal pitch. (I am physically capable of speaking Polish at a higher pitch, but I'd have to make a very deliberate effort. In the course of normal conversation, trying to think of what to say and how to say it in the other language and how to pronounce it properly, my pitch drops.)
I didn't think much of this until I saw some stand-up comedian on TV talking about how he has a Francophone wife/girlfriend/whatever, and how her pitch drops when speaking English. This has me wondering if it's a common phenomenon. Does pitch always drop in the other language, or does it rise sometimes? Do certain target languages (or target languages in combination with certain mother tongues) consistently cause pitch to raise or lower? Is the phenomenon the same for both men and women? Is it related to how similar the target language is to the speaker's mother tongue?
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