I Speak Your Language explores how language shapes our lives. Host Kadi, a linguist & poet, talks to experts, artists and communities to unpack how language shapes our daily lives and identities. The podcast is a space to recognise and reflect on the barriers that shape how we communicate, and how we navigate them. Tune in every Thursday and join the community! Thanks to KU Leuven for their support.
© Original music. All rights reserved.
I Speak Your Language explores how language shapes our lives. Host Kadi, a linguist & poet, talks to experts, artists and communities to unpack how language shapes our daily lives and identities. The podcast is a space to recognise and reflect on the barriers that shape how we communicate, and how we navigate them. Tune in every Thursday and join the community! Thanks to KU Leuven for their support.
© Original music. All rights reserved.
In this episode, Kadi is joined by cognitive neuroscientist Dr Matt Davis (University of Cambridge) to explore how we understand speech, even when it sounds nothing like speech at all. From noisy cafés to unfamiliar accents to whispered or electronically altered speech, Matt explains how the brain fills in the gaps when what we’re hearing is degraded or difficult to make out.
Kadi and Matt walk through live audio demos of sine-wave speech and vocoded speech, offering listeners the rare chance to experience these illusions firsthand. For anyone curious to try the demonstrations themselves, all the audio examples are available on Matt’s research pages: