Four Things You Need to Know About Telephone Talking

In the beginning man uttered grunts and groans to the person next to them to indicate a rudimentary thought. The hollow tree stump to be used as a drum was the next evolution. This gave way to fire, and smoke signals were born. This was closely followed by telegraph, radio, telephone and then the pinnacle of communications the internet.

Somewhere along this progression we lost our ability to understand the most basic of all human communications, the voice. We lost the ability and some would argue the desire to really communicate and to really understand one another. Over the next few postings I will be discussing this in greater detail. I would love to share this communications journey with you. In order to come along you'll need to go to my blog and become a follower. Following my blog does not obligate you to anything other than you might enjoy what we discuss on this site. It also helps promote the blog by raising it in the search rankings. Please take a moment and become a follower right now. Click here: Visual-Listening Blog

Now back to our story. If you were like me, you bugged your parents for months until they finally relented and bought you your first drum kit. This is where it all went very bad. You began to communicate, not realizing that everyone within a three block radius could hear you murdering the drum solo to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. It is precisely this range of sound that attracted the ancients to use the drum, originally a hollow tree. They could communicate over vast distances.

There was a limitation in the beginning. If your village was under attack and you sounded the distress call on the drum it sounded "Tonally" the same as "hey what's for dinner" There was no sense of urgency to the sounds.

This problem was resolved in central Africa by the Bantu speaking tribes. They developed the drum equivalents of their language a sort of Morse code. A word, whether, in English or a form of Bantu can have a completely different meaning depending on the intonation expressed. In my book, Don't Look At Me In That Tone of VOICE! I discuss this in terms of a musical sing song-ness to our speech. These tones indicate many things such as urgency, fright, pleasure, etc.

The drums of the Bantu can easily replicate these tones. There are, as you might expect, limitations to this form of communication. Many words contain the same number of syllables. One might assume confusion would set in, not so. The tribesmen of the Bantu speaking nations say they can hear the difference by the context the drummed phrase is sent in. As you might imagine a message sent using drums could be quite lengthy.

Now we return to your mangling of the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida drum solo. How good a communicator are you? Can you hear the tonal changes in the voice of the person you are speaking with? Do you pay attention to these "Speech Road Signs?" Are you listening to the overall speech and not simply thinking about what you are about to say? I recommend you take a tip from the Bantu drummers. They cannot drum (speak) over one another, if they are to hear and comprehend the message. Thus you too should listen to the entire message before you formulate your thoughts and response.

Until next week, listen carefully and think before you speak!