Why does plugging your nostrils make your voice sound different?
In: Biology
It’s because when you speak normally, you use a specific set of muscles that create the noise, and they all work together as a group. When you plug your nose, that group has just lost a part, and now produces a different noise.
This will more be more a physics question that biology. But by closing your nostrils you’re changing the pathways that sound can escape.
Sound resonance. When you speak normally, you blow air trough your larynx, your vocal cords vibrate generating “sound” in the air passing trough your throat. The difference is that sound does not only propagate trough air but also trough solid matter. When your vocal cords produce a sound it propagates trough your entire head and neck, but specifically trough your larynx, pharynx and nasal cavities, which are all interconnected. Sound “resonates” in these cavities, in the sense that it bounces on the walls of these cavities and it changes its sound based on how it bounces.
So, when we plug our nostrils our voice sounds different simply because the way it bounces inside our cavities changed. Instead of exiting trough the nose cleanly, most of it has to travel all the way back and exit trough the mouth, and some of it propagates trough whatever object is plugging your nose. This is also what happens when you get a cold and your nose is full of mucus, changing the sound of your voice
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