Hmm. My wife says she has no internal voice when she reads. Her reading speed is about 10 times faster than mine, but if you ask us a question about something we both read a year ago, my memory is usually much better.
yeah, well, OxyMoron, normally i only see text when the voice is SO INCREDIBLY BORING that reading their words rather than listening is an improvement.
ahh, and an idea with no real weight behind it i’m just gonna throw out…
maybe that voice of yours is that of some male friend of your parents, who, perhaps, babysat you when you were little and just forming the associations needed for reading.
or, if you never knew your father, maybe that’s his voice.
just ignore that if it doesn’t relate, but the brain can do some wierd stuff right as it’s forming whole new processes, and grow some really strange associations…
Great, now it’s gonna take me a week to get thru the rest of the SDMB. Thanks.
I always have the voice in my head when I read. If I miss the voice in my head for a word when I’m turning the page or something, I have to go back and let the voice say the word. Even if I’m a sentance or two on and know what the word was. (no, I’m not OCD, not at all. Wait, my hands are dirty! Must disinfect!!) It’s usually my voice, the same one I think with and write with. But one time I was reading Childhood’s End by Arthur Clarke and the whole thing was narated in his voice. Unfortunatly, he talks really slowly, so it took me about twice as long to read as it should have. 
Thanks for all the input, everyone.
Just to clarify (or perhaps not) my OP – there does appear to be a mental voice when I read, but it is usually at such a low level, it’s essentially inaudible.
The best analogy I can think of is of a kid in class paying zero attention. Suddenly the teacher asks, “What did I just say?”
And the kid amazes himself and the teacher by yanking the correct response out of his sensory memory: “You said diamonds are a form of carbon.”
When I read, the voice is like the teacher’s – inaudible and distant until something happens to make me notice its presence.
My problem starts at that moment: the instant I pay attention to the voice, it gets “louder” and becomes a distracting parallel process to absorbing the information from the text. It takes a minute for it to fade into the background. Normally, I read very quickly, but when the reading voice kicks in, I’m good for about 50% speed.
Sounds like a couple people have similar experiences, but I’m surprised to find myself in the minority… How 'bout that.
My experience is very similar to yours Malice.
I learned to read almost on my own at four years old. My mother never tried to teach me to read, she just read a lot to me and I figured most of it out. There hasn’t been a day since I was four that I didn’t have a book I was reading.
Usually I read quickly and don’t hear a voice. Sometimes (usually with dialog) I slow it down and hear a voice in my head. I think that the voice is my own, but with a snobby almost british accent. I think it is the voice I would use if I decided to become a governess. A voice requires slower reading though because usually I read too fast for a voice to keep up with.
I always hear a voice when I am writing or typing.
I often hear that background voice when reading. Usually it is just that though, background. Sometimes it gets louder and it seems like I hear it but that mainly happens when I am reading books based on movies that I’ve seen. (Example whenever I read Dragonheart I ‘hear’ Sean Connery when reading Draco’s lines)
Also when I post I hear myself in the back of my head saying the words out loud. I type a lot like I talk, which probably explains why my grammer isn’t always very good…
When I read I have the similar “voice hearing” going on in my head. But I have also heard that same voice mispronounce words that I can pronounce. It causes me such trouble that it actually disrupts my reading. It’s very odd. Sometimes if it’s an everyday ordinary word like “that” for example, I actually argue with myself about how I should be mentally pronouncing it. Does this happen to anyone else?
Thanks for your comments, Zumba.
This exactly sums up why I think the voice is such a nuisance:
And ditto this too:
I actually get that sometimes… It really bugs me when that happens. I find it’s worst when trying to decipher names, the most trouble I’ve had was with Hermione but it’s finally straightened itself out since I saw the movie.
My reading sounds like James Earl Jones. Not his Darth Vader voice, more like his Field of Dreams/“This is CNN” voice.
But have you ever tried changing what the voice sounds like? I had fun trying out people and characters like James Bond, Jeff Foxworthy, Steve Martin, an old girlfriend, etc. But when I tried out the way the adults always talked in those Charlie Brown cartoons, I found I couldn’t read at all! It all just came out “Wahh wahh, wahh wah wahh wahhh, wah wah wah wahhhh”.
What’s with that?