Hearing Health Guide

Speech Banana

Definition

The speech banana is a curved, banana-shaped region overlaid on an audiogram chart that marks where the sounds of everyday conversational speech typically fall, both in pitch (frequency, measured in Hz) and loudness (measured in dB HL). Audiologists plot a person's hearing thresholds against this region to show, at a glance, which speech sounds a person can and cannot hear comfortably. It gets its name from its shape: wider on the left where vowel sounds cluster, narrowing on the right where quieter, high-frequency consonants sit.

Why It's Shaped Like a Banana

Speech sounds aren't evenly distributed across the audiogram. Vowels (a, e, o) tend to be lower in pitch and louder, so they cluster in the lower-frequency, lower-dB part of the chart. Consonants, especially unvoiced ones like s, f, th, and k, sit higher in frequency and are much softer.

When you plot every common speech sound this way, the region they occupy curves down and narrows toward the high-frequency side. That curve is the banana.

How to Read It on Your Audiogram

On a standard audiogram, frequency (Hz) runs left to right and loudness (dB HL) runs top to bottom, with quieter sounds at the top. If your plotted thresholds fall inside the banana at a given frequency, you can typically hear that speech sound at normal conversational volume.

If your thresholds fall below or outside the banana, especially on the right side, the softer high-frequency consonants become difficult or impossible to hear clearly, even though louder, lower-pitched vowels still come through fine.

What It Means If Your Thresholds Fall Outside It

This pattern explains a common complaint: hearing that someone is talking but not being able to make out the words. High-frequency consonants carry most of the information that distinguishes similar-sounding words, so losing access to that part of the banana affects clarity more than volume.

This is also why simply turning up the volume, on a TV or in conversation, doesn't fully solve the problem for many people with high-frequency hearing loss. The vowels get louder, but the missing consonants stay just as hard to distinguish.

Common Questions

Speech Banana FAQ

What frequencies does the speech banana cover?

The speech banana generally spans about 250 Hz to 6,000 Hz, covering the frequency range where the sounds of conversational speech occur, from low-pitched vowels to high-pitched consonants like s and f.

If my thresholds are inside the speech banana, is my hearing normal?

Falling inside the speech banana means you can likely hear most conversational speech sounds at typical volume. It doesn't rule out subtler issues, like difficulty in background noise, that a pure-tone audiogram alone doesn't capture.

Why do consonants disappear before vowels in hearing loss?

Consonants are generally higher in frequency and lower in volume than vowels. Since age-related and noise-induced hearing loss typically affects high frequencies first, consonants tend to become inaudible well before vowels do, which is why speech can sound present but unclear.

Free LSTN Tools

Tools Related to Speech Banana

Free Hearing Test

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Audiogram Review

Upload a clinical audiogram to see how your thresholds compare to the speech banana, explained in plain English.

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Sources

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