Speech is the vocalized form of
human communication. It is based upon the
syntactic combination of
lexicals and
names that are drawn from very large (usually about 1,000 different
words)
vocabularies. Each spoken word is created out of the
phonetic combination of a limited set of
vowel and
consonant speech sound units. These vocabularies, the syntax which structures them, and their set of speech sound units differ, creating the existence of many thousands of different types of
mutually unintelligible human
languages. Most human speakers are able to communicate in two or more of them, hence being
polyglots. The vocal abilities that enable humans to produce speech also provide humans with the ability to
sing.
