Speech Banana

The Speech Banana

The Speech Banana is a term used to describe the area where the phonemes, or sounds of human speech, appear on an audiogram. When the phonemes are plotted out on the audiogram they take the shape of a banana, therefore audiologists and other speech professionals refer to that area as the speech banana. While many other sounds fall outside of the speech banana, audiologists are most concerned with the frequencies within the speech banana because a hearing loss in those frequencies can affect a child's ability to learn language.