Could Helen Keller hear herself talk?

My thoughts would be no. I believe she can feel the vibrations inside if her head though. She probably cant hear herself or how she sounds.

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I can only speak from my own experience, and since Helen Keller and I have the same type of hearing loss, no, there’s no “hearing” occurring at all.

To be able to actually hear, the sounds need to travel down the auditory nerve to the aural center in the brain. When someone loses their hearing due to high fever, the hairs in the cochlea, and possibly parts of the auditory nerve are damaged, so sound can not travel down the nerve at all, thus, no hearing is processed at all.

When I speak, I can feel the vibrations of sound around my head and in my neck and can distinguish the differences between SOME sounds—i.e. If I pay attention, I can tell if I’m speaking in a high or low pitch or whether I’m loud or soft. Some sounds vibrate more than others—but there is no distinction between the vibrations among the vowels, and many voiced consonants ‘feel’ the same. To make that distinction, I pay attention to mouth and tongue placement more than the vibrations.

I took speech training for 12 years—it’s mostly memorization, constant repetition, imitation through feeling vibrations by hand and never 100% accurate. It’s almost like a “Paint By Numbers” endeavor—you can memorize the codes, placements, mechanics, but it will never look/sound like the original. I speak quite well considering that I am thoroughly, 100% Deaf (which is rare, actually), and speaking is completely a cognitive effort, not a natural one.

From what I understand, from being exposed to information about Helen Keller my entire life, is that she learned speech the same way—memorization, repetition, cognition, mechanics, placement, etc, etc.

No. She couldn’t hear herself talk and could not talk normally. She said not being able to speak normally was one of her greatest disappointments in life. I posted this amazing video the other day on Fluther for a different question. A precious piece of history.

@linguaphile I have to ask: What form does your internal discourse take? Hearing people chatter to themselves all day long, and the chatter has a kind of auditory quality to it. How about you?

@linguaphile, thank you for your incredibly enlightening answer.

She was completely deaf, mute, and blind. So, no.

@thorninmud English is my first language, even if it’s not my primary language, so much of my internal discourse is in English but when I get angry, ASL comes to the forefront. I don’t think my internal discourse has an auditory quality to it—I can’t explain it but it’s just language and doesn’t occur in an auditory or visual manner.

@livelaughlove21 Helen wasn’t mute. Actually, she was taught to speak and gave speeches to large audiences, met several US presidents and international dignitaries. It’s an archaic fallacy to assume that someone who is blind and deaf would be mute, and it is quite offensive to use the word “mute”—it’s the same as using spic, wop or wetback.

@linguaphile Was she not completely unable to speak throughout childhood though? And what is the PC term for mute, then?

@linguaphile, did you watch the video I linked?

@livelaughlove21 Mute technically means that their voice doesn’t work. Very few people are completely unable to use their voices, and many of those people are people who actually can hear. Many people assume an immediate connection between the ear and voice- but they’re separate. Many deaf people can speak and use their voices, just not clearly, and many choose not to speak. The reason ‘mute’ is offensive is because it assumes a total lack of speech, when that’s not true.

Choosing not to speak doesn’t make a deaf person mute. It’s easier not to speak than to deal with people being ignorant and rude about the quality of our speech. Stutterers go through the same thing with the general public- people assume that intelligence is tied in to speech, when that’s absolutely not true.

Helen was able to use her voice all her life—just when she was young, her speech wasn’t meaningful. She could speak before she lost her hearing and sight.

To mute a TV, mute a computer—that’s different and obviously not offensive—that’s a different usage and doesn’t apply to people.

@bkcunningham Yes, it’s an interesting video, but if I can’t hear, how can I figure out whether her speech is clear or not? It doesn’t look like it, though. The most interesting part to me is the tactile signing—that’s the name for when they sign inside the hands.

@linguaphile Duly noted.

I thought it was captioned for you. She spoke about one of her biggest disappointments in life was not being able to speak coherently and correctly. My apologies to you, @linguaphile. Keller was about 19 months old when she lost her sight and hearing. Even if you could hear, you can’t understand a word she says. That is why she had an assistant interpreting for her.

@linguaphile For what it’s worth, according to Anne Sullivan, Helen was mute from the time she went deaf as a baby until she was 6 years old.

I’d also like to clarify that I am not under the impression that deaf people cannot speak. I said what I did because I wasn’t aware she ever made noise. I’m well aware that deaf people can talk.

@livelaughlove21 Duly noted back. :-)

@bkcunningham No apologies needed! And thank you for the summary.

@linguaphile, these two amazing historical videos of Helen Keller are captioned.

Although impossible, I would love to have seen footage of Laura Bridgman who was a teacher of Anne Sullivan.