40 Fun Facts About Better Speech and Hearing Month

Which bone of the middle ear, nicknamed the stirrup, is the smallest bone in the human body?

Stapes is the Latin word for stirrup, and the bone is also the lightest in the human body.

Which football tradition began at Gallaudet University so that rival teams could not read the deaf players' signs?

The huddle dates to the 1890s, when deaf player Paul Hubbard gathered his teammates in a circle to hide his signing from opponents.

Which founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA went deaf in one ear after a grain of wedding rice lodged there?

Juliette Gordon Low already had partial hearing loss, and removing the rice thrown at her wedding punctured her eardrum.

Which gas makes a voice sound squeaky because sound travels nearly three times faster through it than through air?

Helium raises the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract, while the vocal folds themselves keep vibrating at the same pitch.

Which Looney Tunes character got his stutter from a first voice actor who really did stutter?

Porky Pig was first voiced by Joe Dougherty, whose uncontrollable stutter made recording sessions drag on for hours.

On which Massachusetts island was hereditary deafness once so common that hearing residents signed too?

Martha's Vineyard had its own sign language, shared by deaf and hearing islanders alike, so deafness was no barrier to public life.

Which actor, later famed for his deep bass voice, refused to speak for years in childhood because of a severe stutter?

James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, credited a high school English teacher with helping him end his silence.

The cochlea, the coiled hearing organ of the inner ear, takes its name from which animal?

Snail shell is what the word cochlea means in Latin, and the organ is coiled in nearly every mammal except the egg-laying monotremes.

Which actress became the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, for Children of a Lesser God?

Marlee Matlin won Best Actress for her screen debut, aged just 21.

Better Speech and Hearing Month, an annual ASHA awareness campaign, falls in which month of the year?

May brings the campaign every year, and ASHA now runs it under the name National Speech-Language-Hearing Month.

Which hearing condition makes a person hear ringing, buzzing or hissing when no outside sound is present?

Tinnitus is a symptom rather than a disease, and its most common causes are noise damage and age-related hearing loss.

Which narrow passage linking the middle ear to the back of the nose opens when ears pop on an airplane?

The Eustachian tube normally stays collapsed and has to be actively opened to equalise pressure as a plane descends.

Which composer, almost totally deaf, had to be turned around to see the audience applaud his Ninth Symphony's premiere?

Beethoven was still beating time several bars behind when contralto Caroline Unger gently turned him to face the cheering crowd.

Which teacher taught the deaf and blind Helen Keller language by spelling words into the palm of her hand?

Anne Sullivan's method worked fast: within six months Keller had learned 575 words and the Braille system.

Which British king's work with speech therapist Lionel Logue inspired the Oscar-winning film The King's Speech?

George VI, then Duke of York, sought Logue's help after a 1925 speech at Wembley proved an ordeal for speaker and listeners alike.

Which language disorder, most often caused by stroke, led actor Bruce Willis to retire from films in 2022?

Aphasia develops in about a quarter of patients who have an acute stroke, disrupting how the brain expresses and understands language.

Which organ in the neck, marked on the outside by the Adam's apple, contains the vocal cords?

Larynx is the formal name for the voice box, which also keeps food from going down the windpipe.

American Sign Language is most closely related to the sign language of which European country?

France supplied the roots: Laurent Clerc, a deaf teacher from Paris who co-founded the American School for the Deaf, taught there in French Sign Language.

Which gorilla, famous for her pet kitten All Ball, learned to use signs adapted from American Sign Language?

Koko was the subject of two National Geographic cover stories, and a 1985 picture book about her and the cat became a best-seller.

Which volcano's 1883 eruption made the loudest known sound in history, heard nearly 3,000 miles away near Mauritius?

Krakatoa's blast was mistaken on the island of Rodrigues for cannon fire from a nearby ship.

The decibel, the unit of loudness, honours which inventor whose mother and wife were both deaf?

Bell learned a finger language as a boy so he could tap out family conversations for his mother as her hearing faded.

Which inventor of the phonograph was completely deaf in one ear and barely able to hear in the other?

Thomas Edison's hearing problems began at age 12, and a historian traced them to scarlet fever and untreated middle-ear infections.

Which sense, besides hearing, does the inner ear provide through its fluid-filled semicircular canals?

Balance comes from the vestibular system, which tracks head movement so that reflexes can steady the limbs and trunk.

Unlike humans, which animals can regrow the inner-ear hair cells that turn sound into nerve signals?

Birds regrow damaged hair cells, as fish do, while in people and other mammals the loss is permanent.

Which ability, used by bats and toothed whales, do some blind people imitate by making mouth clicks?

Echolocation got its name by 1944 from zoologist Donald Griffin, who helped first demonstrate it in bats.

Which term describes sound pitched above 20 kilohertz, too high for even healthy young human ears to hear?

Ultrasound is what a silent dog whistle emits: people cannot hear it, but dogs and cats can.

Which multi-sport event, first held in Paris in 1924 as the International Silent Games, is older than the Paralympics?

The Deaflympics were the first international sporting event for athletes with a disability, and competitors cannot be guided by starting pistols or whistles.

Which Best Picture winner, released in 2021, follows the only hearing member of a deaf fishing family in Massachusetts?

CODA stands for child of deaf adults, and the film won all three Oscars it was nominated for, including one for deaf actor Troy Kotsur.

Which US president overcame a childhood stutter by memorizing and reciting lines from Emerson and Yeats?

Joe Biden stuttered into his twenties and has said he finally beat it by spending many hours reciting poetry in front of a mirror.

Which ancient Greek orator is said to have cured his stammer by speaking with pebbles in his mouth?

Demosthenes also trained, Plutarch wrote, by repeating verses while running or out of breath.

In which Central American country did deaf schoolchildren first gathered in 1977 develop their own new sign language?

Nicaragua's new language took shape after a special-education centre drew 50 deaf children together, growing out of their home signs and gestures.

Which bodybuilder, star of TV's The Incredible Hulk, lost most of his hearing to ear infections as a baby?

Lou Ferrigno was bullied over his hearing and speech as a child, and said that wanting to be strong enough to defend himself led him to bodybuilding.

Which phobia, named from the Greek word for tongue, is the fear of speaking in public?

Glossophobia is also called speech anxiety, and clubs such as Toastmasters International help people bring it down to manageable levels.

Which linguistics term names the smallest unit of speech sound that can distinguish one word from another?

Phoneme contrasts are what separate English words like sin and sing, though Spanish speakers hear those two sounds as one.

Which region in the frontal lobe of the brain, usually on the left side, is linked to producing speech?

Broca's area has been linked to language since Paul Broca reported two patients who lost the ability to speak after injury there.

Which medical term names earwax, a secretion that comes in genetically determined wet and dry types?

Cerumen's dry type is a recessive trait traced to a single base change in one gene, while the wet type is dominant.

Which Scottish percussionist, profoundly deaf since childhood, plays barefoot on stage to feel the music?

Evelyn Glennie led a thousand drummers at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Which deaf model and activist won America's Next Top Model and then Dancing with the Stars the following year?

Nyle DiMarco was the first deaf winner of both shows, and he holds a mathematics degree from Gallaudet University.

Speech-language pathologists treat disorders of speech, language, voice and which other everyday bodily function?

Swallowing disorders fall within the field at every age, starting with feeding problems in infants.

How do audiences in deaf culture show applause in a more visual way than clapping palms together?

Twisting raised hands, with the fingers outstretched, turns applause into something to be seen rather than heard.