Speech Speech Speech is human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of a limited set of perfectly articulated and individualized vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are the same word, e.g., "role" or "hotel"), and using those words in their semantic character as words in the lexicon of a language according to the syntactic constraints that govern lexical words' function in a sentence. In speaking, speakers perform many different intentional speech acts, e.g., informing, declaring, asking, persuading, directing, and
Speech repetition thirteen imitable vocal tract place of articulations (from the lips to the glottis). These phones can potentially be pronounced with eleven types of imitable manner of articulations (nasal stops to lateral clicks). Speech can be copied in regard to its social accent, intonation, pitch and individuality (as with entertainment impersonators). Speech can be articulated in ways which diverge considerably in speed, timbre, pitch, loudness and emotion. Speech further exists in different forms such as song, verse, scream and whisper. Intelligible speech can be produced with pragmatic intonation and in regional dialects and foreign accents. These aspects are readily copied: people