What is it that enables your Myna bird to learn to speak more than 100 words and utter as many as 30 sentences? Lingual articulation is one method of altering the resonance properties of the vocal tract in animals. A myna bird can move their tongue around their mouth and shift frequencies to make human-like vowel sounds (Klatt and Stefanski, 1974). The ability of myna birds and parrots to modify formants (a prominent band of frequency that determines the phonetic quality of a vowel) contributes to a mynah bird’s ability to imitate human speech. We used to think that a bird’s vocalisation …
