Speech

Speech

Speech is the vocalized form of human communication. It is based upon the syntactic combination of lexicals and names that are drawn from very large (usually about 10,000 different words) vocabularies. Each spoken word is created out of the phonetic combination of a limited set of vowel and consonant speech sound units. These vocabularies, the syntax which structures them, and their set of speech sound units differ, creating the existence of many thousands of different types of mutually unintelligible human languages. Most human speakers (polyglots) are able to communicate in two or more of them. The vocal abilities that enable humans to produce speech also provide humans with the ability to sing.

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Famous quotes containing the word speech:

    “Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.”
    —Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

    “What is this conversation, now secular,
    A speech not mine yet speaking for me in
    The heaving jelly of my tribal air?
    It rises in the throat, it climbs the tongue,
    It perches there for secret tutelage....”
    —Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    “We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, “That man is a Red, that man is a Communist.” You never heard a real American talk in that manner.”
    —Frank Hague (1876–1956)