Late Night Philosophy

Human Speech

I was thinking yesterday about human speech. I noticed that in at least the English language that there are two kinds of sounds that are used in all words. There are sounds made by pushing air past your tongue, teeth or lips in order to make a sound. 's' is a good example. It's simply a hissing made by pushing air around your tongue and through your teeth. 'p' is another. It's more of a popping sound made by suddenly releasing pressurized air from your lungs. The other kind of sound is made by using your vocal cords to produce a sound. That vibration is then manipulated by your mouth, lips and teeth. Even the position of your jaw changes the sound you make. The vowels are the basic sounds your vocal cords make.

I haven't heard that many different languages, but all that I've ever heard use those combinations. Some people roll their 'r's, something I can't do very well, but that counts as a vocalization. The only other way that the human mouth could be used to make a language would be tongue clicking. That's where you roll your tongue up in your mouth and then quickly un-roll it in your mouth so that it makes a clicking sound. It doesn't require any more air than what's in your mouth already and there's no use for the vocal cords. In fact, to do it, you need to hold your breath. Of course, to make that into a language, you'd need a lot of tongue dexterity to be able to 'talk' with any speed.

There might be another way too. You could whistle. Again, you'd need a good deal of dexterity to mouth your lips and tongue fast enough to make a word. And whistling requires more air than simply pushing air over your vocal cords. Another way would be to squeeze air through tightly closed lips to make a squeaking sound but, like the others, it would be difficult to control your lips. Or teeth clacking, but that would probably erode your teeth faster.

I suppose that we use the air pushing/vocal cord combination because it takes the least amount of effort. We already know how to breathe and we already have efficient vocal cords. Many of those alternatives above replace the vocal cords with lips, tounge, or teeth as the vibrator. In the air/vocal cord combo, the vocal cords are the primary vibrators and are used to make the loudest and most diverse sounds. Pushing air makes softer, quieter sounds and so I call it the secondary vibrator. So in my above alternatives, they try to replace the vocal cords as the primary vibrator. But the tongue, lips, and teeth aren't as efficient as the vocal cords, which are designed to produce sound. I mean, try 'shouting' by clicking-clicking or teeth clacking. The tongue just isn't strong enough to make a sound loud enough and you'd break your teeth trying to make a sound that loud. Or try 'whispering' by lip-squeaking. The most diverse alternative I can think about would be whistling. The problem with whistling is that it's not as efficient with the use of air as your vocal cords are. You can make a sustained sound with your vocal cords longer than by whistling.

Well, I don't know if this has a point; it's simply what I was thinking about.
I'll have another entry very soon.