How long have you gone without verbal communication?

[sayitwell]

I live alone and I tend to not speak for days at a time.  I'm always e-mailing, texting and typing out my thoughts.  I think I once went an entire two weeks without saying anything but for "Hi" and "thank you" etc.  How long have you gone without verbal communication?

[Jellyfish]

Weeks, maybe months. That time is over but was some interesting experience.

[LauraM]

Probably the longest I've gone without speaking has been a few days.  I stay in touch with some family members on the phone so my days without speaking never drag out too long.  Sometimes when speaking for the first time in a while, it would feel a bit strange to hear my voice, but the strangeness faded within a minute or two.

But always, in the absence of the spoken word, I was communicating in other ways; mostly email and, of course writing quite a bit for professional and personal purposes. 

[thekernel]

I don't think I can spend very long without talking. If I have the house to myself completely, which is very rare with my family, I'm usually singing 

[Gregor]

I've never really thought about that before. A few days maybe, and having worked with a lot of homeless people who are also friendless I know that they resort to asking people what time it is just to be able to talk to someone.

[tulosai]

I'm not sure, but I think probably a long weekend would be the longest and I sort of doubt I've gone that long.  I skype with family and friends a lot, work 5 days a week at a job that requires speaking, and am fairly active on weekends.  I think it might be interesting to go a long period in silence, but it would also be very lonely for me.

[sayitwell]

To the first respondent, tell us more about your month plus of not speaking.  I find these experiments to be incredibly interesting.  Once I begin speaking at length after a prolonged period of time without using my voice I almost feel as if it isn't me talking.  Like I almost do not recognize my voice.  It makes me smile to think about that.  I wonder if one could completely lose his phonetic ability if he stopped speaking for a very long period of time.

[GetFresh]

I find it very difficult to hold off on talking for such long periods.  I talk everyday to all sorts of people since i's part of my job.  The longest time I can think of without uttering a word was one day.  I probably stayed home the whole day and was on the computer/playing games.

[kitkat0124]

The longest time for me without talking is just a day. Most of the time if I'm alone in the house I will call a friend so I can have someone I can talk to. I live alone, but I always have friends or family members visiting me. So it is very seldom that I'm alone in the house.

[SpiralArchitect]

The longest I have ever gone without verbal communication was around 8 days. That too was because I was staying at a place where very few people could speak Hindi or English. The people who could though were just too annoying for conversation or chose not to use those two languages. I think I could have gone 2-3 more days without any verbal communication but something like a month is just pushing it.

[pcgamer]

I can't go without saying anything for even a day. I mean, socializing with other people is indispensable for me. I can't imagine not having a verbal communication for days.

[limon]

Probably a couple of days if you mean not speaking at all, since I do tend to talk to myself.

To other people? About a week, while housesitting recently in fact

[sayitwell]

There was a point where I began reading books and the Internet aloud in order to maintain my phonetic abilities.  That was a long time ago in a very lonely time in my life.  Things have changed since then.  I guess I am a little more anti-social than most people.

[mareebaybay]

The longest I have gone without speaking to someone is probably an hour or two. There are so many ways for people to communicate nowadays. There are days when I haven't spoken to someone in person for hours, but I am always communicating verbally in some way.

[justusforus]

I always have phone calls for work so I would say the longest was two days.  The only exception to that was when I got really ill and lost my voice for nearly 5 days.  That was really tough being ill and not being able to communicate verbally.

[Trellum]

Longest for me would be a whole day (not counting the times I got so sick I couldn't even speak). That happened when I was a teen and my mother went for a holiday, my dad stayed at home and I spent most of the day in my room.  So that day my dad was out most of the day, we talked next day...  I don't like to talk that much, but lately I feel a great need to do so (mostly because of the symptoms of my chronic disease - I feel better after I talk about it!).

[writeletters]

Oh wow! I don't think I could ever go without speaking for more than a few hours! I mean, even that is hard, especially if you people around you or nearby. I do remember once, a couple of years ago, for the 40hr Famine in NZ, I tried to go without speaking for forty hours. That failed!

[Guest akasha24]

I live in the same house with my mum and my sister but I live on the top floor, they live on the bottom. I actually love being alone but after a while I really need someone I can talk to. I think the longest time I spent without any verbal communication was 2-3 days. The problem is that I love talking, so if I don't talk to anyone, I still need to do something, so I would sing or watch TV just to avoid the silence 

[Baburra]

I may have gone a day or two without speaking. I often go out and buy small stuff daily, and I always linger around stores to talk with the cashiers and sales people. I don't like to text, but I would sometimes hangout and just talk to people via forums or chat online on some lazy days, but never for too long.

[Guest isabbbela]

Probably a couple of days at most! I would go crazy if I spent more than that with no conversations whatsoever! I was the longest without talking on a weekend I stayed home studying for finals when I was in college... I would usually at least call my mom, but at very rare times I would be so stuck in books I wouldn't do even that.

[FartoTheWise]

Maybe a day at the most.

[DiesIrae]

I feel so weird because I do talk a lot. I live with family so there's really no reason for me to not speak, we're a noisy bunch. Even if I'm alone in the house, I have cats who I yell at when they're misbehaving. xD So yeah, I guess, maybe an hour or two? Not including when I sleep of course!

[Bonyi]

Wow! That's a long time to stay without talking or relating with people. I've never stayed that long without talking. Even if I don't want to say anything, something must come up for me to say something about. In fact that is what my job is all about.

[Francisco23]

I've gone more than 9 months without verbal communication (crack a laugh). That was when i was in my mother's womb. Let me see now... I usually go for long hours each day without communicating with anyone. This is because i telecommute and everyone else is gone out of the house to their physical workplaces.

But on a serious note, I've gone a whole 2 days or more without verbal communication. I was meditating.

[Qamra]

The longest was a week. I had time off, just broke up with my boyfriend and had my fridge stocked up so I didn't have to go to shop. I spent whole weeks playing computer games and didn't even text anybody once. It was pretty sickening, not because of lack of talking but the way it happened.