Examining ATI Wisdom Booklets: Booklet 2 – Breathing and Speech

Last updated on: August 15, 2016 at 5:30 pm by Suzanne Titkemeyer

The top illustration is odd.
- The mouth above the tongue and nose portion is right.
- The diagram is either missing the hyoid bone…or has two.
- The vocal cord fold is really difficult to see in black and white on the diagram.
- This is more a personal preference, but since they labeled the epiglottis, I would have labeled the esophagus which is the thin tube behind the cricoid cartilage and in front of the spine. The epiglottis flips down to block the trachea when we swallow so food doesn’t end up in the lungs.
Actually, sounds can be made in some sections of the vocal tract independently. Clicking sounds can be made using just the tongue. (Random factoid: English speakers do use click sounds; we use them as a method of signalling a transition in topics. English speakers find languages that do use click sounds highly confusing because we interpret the click as a topic change rather than a constant sound so our brains interpret the person speaking as changing subjects multiple times per sentence. Try reading that last few sentences aloud with a click every time you see an “S” to see the problem.)
The second illustration has one problem: the item labeled “thyroid” should be labeled “thyroid cartilage” since the thyroid is a different organ located in front of the thyroid cartilage.

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