Speaking : a wonderful ability

-Satya Ranjan Pattnaik

To read the article in odia click here.

Speaking is a wonderful ability. It is a way in which we could directly express our emotions or gratitude in a hush, no problems whatsoever, but the steps or the procedure of a proper speech was extremely difficult given the thousand and thousand years of evolution. Starting from the obvious “ooh” and “aa” or “Koo”, “ka” to the modern-day “Hi”, “Hello”, “How are you?”, we have come a long way. 

Image Source - Google| Image By- pulsosocial.com

Speaking begins with the formation of a person’s thoughts and results in the formation of words and sentences to express that thought. The act of speaking occurs by air coming from the lungs, through the vocal cord, and out of the mouth. We shape sounds using our tongue (tip, blade, front, back), upper and lower lips, upper and lower teeth, and the roof of the mouth (alveolar ridge, palate, velum) in order to say specific sounds and words. Speech sounds differ by voice, place—where sounds are made in the mouth—and manner—the type of sound. 

But then comes another question, “how the hell can we make different types of speech sounds?” So, it goes like this as we all know there are many parts of the body that help us produce speech. To speak, you use your stomach muscles, lungs, voice box, tongue, teeth, lips, and even your nose and your brain coordinates it all. Speech actually starts in the stomach with the Diaphragm which is a large muscle that helps push air from the lungs into the voice box. The voice box or larynx has vocal cords that vibrate to produce your voice. Then, the lips, tongue, and teeth form the sounds to make speech. For example, the tip of the tongue touches just behind your top teeth to make a “d” sound. By moving the tongue, changing how much air comes out, and correcting the vibration of the vocal cords, you can make over 40 different speech sounds. Sometimes the sounds even come out through your nose. Try putting your finger on your nose and say “mmm.” You will feel your nose vibrate! 

That’s all about how we speak but if we look at the matter in a deeply detailed manner, we’ll find that monkeys have strikingly similar vocal structure which is unsurprising given the fact we all have a common ancestor. But even if they have a vocal cord the same as us, they can’t produce a speech or in layman’s terms, they can’t do it like us.

But as we all know; scientists never leave a stone unturned which is good as in this case research done by a talented group of scientists who with the help of simulation found out that monkey vocal tracts are speech ready. But anyways the endpoint is monkeys can’t speak like us. But let’s imagine for a second if that’s true then an interesting interaction could have sparked between me and a monkey telling him that “my mangoes are for my tummy, not your dummy.” 

Seriously, a man talking with a monkey!

Noice isn’t it?!

Anyways, moving from tree hopping animals like monkeys, there are less dangerous and cuter animals who can surprisingly speak like us. They are parrots.

The anomaly is that birds are nothing like us but a domesticated parrot would call it’s owner by its name.

Ever wonder how?

For starters, they don’t have lips and teeth like ours and even their nose is different so how can they speak like us?

So, here’s the thing, they have something we don’t and those are not the wings that I’m aiming towards. They have a different type of voice box called SYRINX. Not only that, they have two of them. Look at the letter “Y”. Now, just draw it upside down and you’ll find it takes the shape of human’s as well as bird’s lower respiratory systems. Where the top part is trachea and lower is the lungs. And the voice box in our Sapiens is called the larynx which is situated above the trachea and as explained earlier these contain vocal folds which thus vibrate when the air flows in order to make sound and we shape our sound through our mouth.

But in the case of birds, the voice box aka Syrinx is present below the trachea. Instead of sending the air to the vocal folds like we do, birds actually control a set of muscles present in their Syrinx to shape and produce sounds. It is a bit complex but next time when u see a bird making sounds just notice how the noise coming directly from the chest where the bird extends and shortens its neck and opens and closes the beak in order to refine the noise but most of the control is done by Syrinx but yet it’s not the most impressive part.

Taking the example of cardinals, they produce whoop notes and these go really fast and these produce more pitches than a piano in less than 10 seconds.

Beat that Eminem!!!

As mentioned earlier, they have 2 sides of syrinx and they switch one side of the syrinx to the other seamlessly in order to make these incredible long spans of pitches.  Adding on to that, the Syrinx of some birds helps them to replicate sounds in astonishing accuracy.  But why are Parrots the only birds who have a strong urgency to mimic us unlike every other bird on our planet??

Parrots are born communicators. From the beginning their brains have been designed for speech, so like when they first hatch, they learn right away from their surroundings. But for humans, speaking is no easy feat, not by a long margin. We’ve got our vowels, plosives and an array of dialects and what not. 

So, in order to pull off such clarity in order to copy from us they have to literally manipulate their vocal tract to another level.

Let’s consider a situation here for plosives. We truly need our lips but don’t think for a second this can limit birds as in their case they have something called Esophageal speech. It's almost like burping which comes from within the trachea.

The force of air which replicates the plosive. As in the case of our vowels we use our lips, tongue and jaw. Researchers have now found out that the parrots move their tongues backward and forward and adjust their beak specifically in order to alter the sound. And so far, these are the only creatures or the only birds which actually use their tongue like us in order to shape the sound that’s coming out. 

But nothing is possible without desire and in this case, parrots have a natural desire to communicate in wild they form strong flocks but in domestic cases like an adorable parrot sitting in my home and shouting my name yeah in that case it forms a social bond with me and in order to communicate with me it starts mimicking its vocal cord in such a way to replicate my speech in this case starting from calling by my name.

Thus, when parrots live with us, we are their flock and they are determined to sing our song.

References: 

1. It’s just a simple explanation on how parrots are the imitators of us If you want to read and learn more about these beautiful creatures, here's the link to the article from which this short thing has emerged.-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159106001055#:~:text=These%20studies%20have%20demonstrated%20that,%2C%20 colour%2C%20 size%20and%20 shape.
2. And remember earlier I told u about a monkey speaking yeah, the programming or digital monkey here’s the link to it - https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/12/e1600723

Written By-
Satya Ranjan Pattnaik