Does speaking less often affect speech capabilities?

[lightburst]

Would speaking less often, even not speaking at all the whole day, affect my ability to speak? I'm 19 right now and this has been the case for about 2-3 years. It's not that I've been dodging social contact, but rather my circumstance is to blame.

There will be days, in fact almost always, where I will not say a full sentence at all because I don't run into conversations. The only words I get so say are for when I pay for the bus fare and tell the guy where my stop is. The only full conversations I get is when I hangout with friends every few weeks.

I'm worried this has any effect on my speech capabilities. I'm even worried this has somehow removed the emotions in my speech, even though I intend to speak with keen interest.

I wonder if there is any documented cases for this.

[Phi for All]

I would think it must affect your vocal chords, much like not walking affects your leg muscles eventually. Disuse is probably better than abuse, though. You can probably recover from disuse by gradually strengthening the voice through speech, humming and singing.

 

Here's some PubMed studies on voice disorders. Not all will be applicable, but it's a good place to start. I would suggest picking a few that sound good and read them aloud.

[SamBridge]

Would speaking less often, even not speaking at all the whole day, affect my ability to speak? I'm 19 right now and this has been the case for about 2-3 years. It's not that I've been dodging social contact, but rather my circumstance is to blame.

 

There will be days, in fact almost always, where I will not say a full sentence at all because I don't run into conversations. The only words I get so say are for when I pay for the bus fare and tell the guy where my stop is. The only full conversations I get is when I hangout with friends every few weeks.

 

I'm worried this has any effect on my speech capabilities. I'm even worried this has somehow removed the emotions in my speech, even though I intend to speak with keen interest.

 

I wonder if there is any documented cases for this.

Well it's not like if you don't talk to someone for 24 hours you will forgot how to speak, but if something happens where you're stuck on an island for a a few months, you pretty much will forget some of the ways in which to communicate in a normal society, it would only be natural you'd adapt to a lack of society. So if your environment models being stranded on an island you should get out more, there's going to be different levels of deterioration of social skills depending on how often you actually use them, they are like muscles, you learn how to better interact with people the more you are with people, so if you don't interact with people that often you will not be as well versed in a social environment as someone else who is.

Edited February 5, 2013 by SamBridge