Better Speech and Hearing Month
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40 free Better Speech and Hearing Month trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Better Speech and Hearing Month is the yearly campaign that puts communication in the spotlight: how we hear, how we speak, and what happens when either becomes difficult. It is a favourite with speech-language pathologists, audiologists, teachers and clinic teams looking for an activity to share. This quiz covers the science and the stories. Expect questions on the tiny parts of the ear and the workings of the voice, on stuttering, hearing loss and other communication disorders, and on the performers, inventors and leaders who lived with them. Sign language and Deaf culture get their own share too. The questions suit a staff-room game, a classroom warm-up or a clinic newsletter, and each one comes with a short explanation, so players leave knowing a little more about speech and hearing than when they started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which bone of the middle ear, nicknamed the stirrup, is the smallest bone in the human body?
Stapes
Stapes is the Latin word for stirrup, and the bone is also the lightest in the human body.
Q 02Which football tradition began at Gallaudet University so that rival teams could not read the deaf players' signs?
The huddle
The huddle dates to the 1890s, when deaf player Paul Hubbard gathered his teammates in a circle to hide his signing from opponents.
Q 03Which founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA went deaf in one ear after a grain of wedding rice lodged there?
Juliette Gordon Low
Juliette Gordon Low already had partial hearing loss, and removing the rice thrown at her wedding punctured her eardrum.
Q 04Which gas makes a voice sound squeaky because sound travels nearly three times faster through it than through air?
Helium
Helium raises the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract, while the vocal folds themselves keep vibrating at the same pitch.
Q 05Which Looney Tunes character got his stutter from a first voice actor who really did stutter?
Porky Pig
Porky Pig was first voiced by Joe Dougherty, whose uncontrollable stutter made recording sessions drag on for hours.
Q 06On which Massachusetts island was hereditary deafness once so common that hearing residents signed too?
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard had its own sign language, shared by deaf and hearing islanders alike, so deafness was no barrier to public life.
Q 07Which actor, later famed for his deep bass voice, refused to speak for years in childhood because of a severe stutter?
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, credited a high school English teacher with helping him end his silence.
Q 08The cochlea, the coiled hearing organ of the inner ear, takes its name from which animal?
Snail
Snail shell is what the word cochlea means in Latin, and the organ is coiled in nearly every mammal except the egg-laying monotremes.
Q 09Which actress became the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, for Children of a Lesser God?
Marlee Matlin
Marlee Matlin won Best Actress for her screen debut, aged just 21.
Q 10Better Speech and Hearing Month, an annual ASHA awareness campaign, falls in which month of the year?
May
May brings the campaign every year, and ASHA now runs it under the name National Speech-Language-Hearing Month.
Q 11Which hearing condition makes a person hear ringing, buzzing or hissing when no outside sound is present?
Tinnitus
Tinnitus is a symptom rather than a disease, and its most common causes are noise damage and age-related hearing loss.
Q 12Which narrow passage linking the middle ear to the back of the nose opens when ears pop on an airplane?
Eustachian tube
The Eustachian tube normally stays collapsed and has to be actively opened to equalise pressure as a plane descends.
Q 13Which composer, almost totally deaf, had to be turned around to see the audience applaud his Ninth Symphony's premiere?
Beethoven
Beethoven was still beating time several bars behind when contralto Caroline Unger gently turned him to face the cheering crowd.
Q 21The decibel, the unit of loudness, honours which inventor whose mother and wife were both deaf?
Bell
Bell learned a finger language as a boy so he could tap out family conversations for his mother as her hearing faded.
Q 22Which inventor of the phonograph was completely deaf in one ear and barely able to hear in the other?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison's hearing problems began at age 12, and a historian traced them to scarlet fever and untreated middle-ear infections.
Q 23Which sense, besides hearing, does the inner ear provide through its fluid-filled semicircular canals?
Balance
Balance comes from the vestibular system, which tracks head movement so that reflexes can steady the limbs and trunk.
Q 14Which teacher taught the deaf and blind Helen Keller language by spelling words into the palm of her hand?
Anne Sullivan
Anne Sullivan's method worked fast: within six months Keller had learned 575 words and the Braille system.
Q 15Which British king's work with speech therapist Lionel Logue inspired the Oscar-winning film The King's Speech?
George VI
George VI, then Duke of York, sought Logue's help after a 1925 speech at Wembley proved an ordeal for speaker and listeners alike.
Q 16Which language disorder, most often caused by stroke, led actor Bruce Willis to retire from films in 2022?
Aphasia
Aphasia develops in about a quarter of patients who have an acute stroke, disrupting how the brain expresses and understands language.
Q 17Which organ in the neck, marked on the outside by the Adam's apple, contains the vocal cords?
Larynx
Larynx is the formal name for the voice box, which also keeps food from going down the windpipe.
Q 18American Sign Language is most closely related to the sign language of which European country?
France
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.
Q 19Which gorilla, famous for her pet kitten All Ball, learned to use signs adapted from American Sign Language?
Koko
Koko was the subject of two National Geographic cover stories, and a 1985 picture book about her and the cat became a best-seller.
Q 20Which volcano's 1883 eruption made the loudest known sound in history, heard nearly 3,000 miles away near Mauritius?
Krakatoa
Krakatoa's blast was mistaken on the island of Rodrigues for cannon fire from a nearby ship.
Q 24Unlike humans, which animals can regrow the inner-ear hair cells that turn sound into nerve signals?
Birds
Birds regrow damaged hair cells, as fish do, while in people and other mammals the loss is permanent.
Q 25Which ability, used by bats and toothed whales, do some blind people imitate by making mouth clicks?
Echolocation
Echolocation got its name by 1944 from zoologist Donald Griffin, who helped first demonstrate it in bats.
Q 26Which term describes sound pitched above 20 kilohertz, too high for even healthy young human ears to hear?
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is what a silent dog whistle emits: people cannot hear it, but dogs and cats can.
Q 27Which multi-sport event, first held in Paris in 1924 as the International Silent Games, is older than the Paralympics?
Deaflympics
The Deaflympics were the first international sporting event for athletes with a disability, and competitors cannot be guided by starting pistols or whistles.
Q 28Which Best Picture winner, released in 2021, follows the only hearing member of a deaf fishing family in Massachusetts?
CODA
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.
Q 29Which US president overcame a childhood stutter by memorizing and reciting lines from Emerson and Yeats?
Joe Biden
Joe Biden stuttered into his twenties and has said he finally beat it by spending many hours reciting poetry in front of a mirror.
Q 30Which ancient Greek orator is said to have cured his stammer by speaking with pebbles in his mouth?
Demosthenes
Demosthenes also trained, Plutarch wrote, by repeating verses while running or out of breath.