When someone loses the use of their vocal cords, through disease or injury, why can’t they just whisper to talk? It seems like that just would just bypass the loss of your vocal cords.
Just something that I’ve been wondering for a while now.
Some people are mute due to brain damage, such as from a stroke. They cannot form words, even if their vocal cords are intact.
I’ve been wondering this too!
As luck would have it, in 40 minutes a speech-language pathologist will be in my living room doing an evaluation on WhyBaby. I will try to remember to ask her this very question.
They can, or some can. A friend of mine suffered neck injuries in a helicopter accident. He could speak by whispering.
OK, Molly, the world’s cutest speech therapist, says that, indeed, some can speak with some damage to the larynx by whispering. She also said it’s relatively uncommon to lose your entire larynx, and that most cases involve damage to one of the vocal folds. Sometimes, they will surgically move one of the vocal folds over (she drew me a cute little diagram, but I don’t know how to reproduce it) so that it can still do it’s job in relation to the intact vocal fold. She also said there are prosthetic vocal folds that can be used in some cases!
Whispering is apparently very difficult and tiring, though, because you have to have a strong air pressure to do it. Most people with no larynxes are taught “burp speak” (or esophogeal speach) or use one of those vibratey boxes (she drew a blank on the real name for it.)
She also wanted to make it clear that this isn’t her specialty (her specialty is working with neonates and babies), and she may not be remembering the finer points.
Oddly enough, it’s called a mechanical larynx.
Cool, thanks. It’s nice to know that what I’ve always wondered isn’t impossible, but that there’s a reason it’s not widely done.
I can whisper, but my whispering sounds distorted. I never really learned how to make the sounds for words. It’s also a pain in the ass, the words take forever as I have to think about how to make them, and I don’t want people that close trying to listen to me.
I’m definitely not ok with using something that make me sound like a robot, and
Burp Speak? Oh god no!
I’ll stick to my sign language!
ASL?
30/m/pa
WAG, you need to hear it to replicate it. Imagine trying to sing say an A note without hearing it first.
Losing your vocal cords doesn’t remove your hearing. 
I laughed.
Burp speak is easier than whispering? Seriously! :eek:
Oh, wow…ever find an old thread you don’t remember in the slightest ever replying to? 
Since I wrote that, I’ve become a nurse, and had two patients who lost their speech production many years ago (one due to surgery to remove cancer, one from having his neck impaled in a motorcycle accident.)
“Burp speech” is *louder *than whispering, is the best advantage of it, I’ve learned. It is a colloquial term for “esophageal speech”, which is kind of like that annoying thing your little brother did at the breakfast table. You swallow air into your esophagus, instead of breathing it into your lungs, and as you expel it, you make words with your tongue, lips and palate. It takes a lot of time to learn how to do it, and even when you get good at it, you usually speak much slower than natural speech - about 1/2 the rate. But you can be heard across the room, unlike with whispering.
Today with decent electrolarynx technology (although yeah, they still sound like Darth Vadar on quaaludes), many people never bother to use esophageal speech at all. Both my patients are older folks, and learned it because the electrolarynxes they had at the time of their larynx damage were not very good. They both have newer electrolarynxes now, but like hearing aids and dentures, can’t always be bothered to keep them in reach. She (the cancer survivor) also doesn’t like it because she’s got weak and shaky hands, and sometimes has trouble holding the device in the right spot on her neck. We’re working with an Occupational Therapist to see if we can fix that.
John, surely you’ve been on the intarwebs long enough to know that a/s/l used to be a quick pick-up line: “Age/Sex/Location.”
That whooshed me also.