2178: What is Whispering? Dec 1, 2020

Whispering is something that everyone knows intuitively but might not be able to explain exactly.

Whispering is a process by which the vocal folds, sometimes called vocal chords, are not vibrating, though air still passes through. Therefore while all the processes of sound production above the larynx remains the same as in normal speech, rather than oscillating between voiceless and voiced sounds, the latter of which is determined by whether the vocal folds vibrate, whispering uses oscillation between voiceless sounds and whisper. That means that distinctions between voiced sounds like [b, d, g] and voiceless sounds, the counterparts here being [p, t, k] are minimal, and AI technology still struggles to understand this. In general, although whispering takes less energy overall, the vocal folds actually get more strained.