‘One fish, two fissshh, red frfrfrfrish, blue fisisish,’ begins Dr Seuss’s famous book - if you’re trying to talk with a speech jammer, that is.

In a new video, one man tries to read through the book while hearing his own voice being fed back to him, with a slight time delay.

The hilarious results see him stumble his way through the book while trying to overcome the debilitating sounds.

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'Brian' from Pennsylvania tried to read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish while wearing a speech jammer (pictured) - which reduces his speech to gibberish. A speech jammer plays your voice back with a time delay of 0.2 seconds, which makes it very difficult to talk

In the video for YouTube channel Speech Jammer Storytime, host Brian explains that ‘a speech jammer is a device that records your voice and plays it back at a slight delay.’

WHAT IS SPEECH JAMMING? When your speech is played back to you with a delay of about 0.2 seconds, it can make it very difficult to talk. This can be done by using a pair of headphones and a microwave. Several apps are available that can produce the effect. Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) can be useful, though, in helping people overcome a stutter. Advertisement

This confuses the brain and makes you ‘completely incomprehensible'.

Brian then proceeds to struggle his way through the Dr Seuss book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

From the beginning, it is obvious that he finds it incredible difficult to talk - with his speech full of stutters and his words slurred together.

Each time he reads a new sentence, before the delay kicks in, he seems to cope with the words.

But as soon as he gets halfway through a sentence, the delay makes it incredibly difficult to talk.

Speech jamming occurs because human speech relies on what is essentially a ‘feedback loop’ with the Broca area in the frontal lobe of the brain, which helps control speech.

To speak a sentence successfully out loud, your brain monitors your voice to keep it sounding like it normally does.

But when that loop is interrupted and your speech is played back, your brain becomes confused and tries to correct itself - resulting in garbled speech.

In addition to this, when you hear your voice back you hear it at a different frequency, so the effect is amplified as your brain tries to work out what to do.

Some studies have found that speech jamming occurs best when reading a pre-prepared speech or a book, rather than spontaneous chat.

With practice, it is apparently possible to overcome the effects of a speech jammer and keep talking, although it is difficult.

In 2012, a team of Japanese researchers designed a ‘gun’ called the Speech Jammer which they claimed could be used to stop people talking nearby.

When pointed at someone, it throws their words back at them in 0.2 seconds, apparently making it nearly impossible for them to talk.

Speech jamming isn’t all bad, though - some have claimed that such delayed auditory feedback (DAF) can improve fluency in individuals who suffer from a stammer.