Speech banana

The speech banana is a banana-shaped region where the sounds (phonemes) of human languages appear on an audiogram.

(An audiogram is a graphical representation of someone's ability to hear over a range of frequencies and loudness levels.

Hearing on an audiogram is displayed as frequency in Hertz on the x-axis and loudness in decibels on the y-axis.)

Audiologists are primarily concerned with hearing loss that occurs within the speech banana because:

People with normal hearing can also hear sounds outside of the speech banana, including both lower-pitched sounds (such bass musical notes and rumbling noises) and higher-pitched sounds (such as very high musical notes, the rustling of leaves, and the chirping of birds).