It’s physically impossible to hum while pinching your nose. Go ahead, give it a try. See? To understand why humming, which we often associate with the mouth, would be affected by the nose, we have to look at the anatomy of our vocal folds. Vocal folds, aka vocal cords, are delicate bands of muscle located in the larynx, aka the voice box. When relaxed (i.e., when we’re quiet), our vocal folds resemble a wishbone. But when we speak, sing, yell, grunt, whisper — and, yes, hum — we send air up from the lungs and through the voice box. Simultaneously, those thin bands of muscle contract together, as if the open end of the wishbone has snapped shut. In reality, our vocal folds move in a wavelike pattern, vibrating against one another in varying frequencies that allow us to speak, sing, shout, and murmur. The faster our folds vibrate together, the higher the pitch; the slower, the lower.
While we might think of humming as a sound that emanates from our mouth and lips, we actually produce this sound by sending air from the voice box to the nasal cavity and out through the nostrils. Thus, when we pinch our noses, there’s nowhere for the air to travel, and the vibration and corresponding sound stops. This also explains why pinching your nose mid-hum might make you feel like something’s caught in the back of your throat. (That’s the air trying to find a way out.) Another good way to test this theory is to hum when you’re congested. Depending on how blocked your nostrils are, you might not be able to hum at all, or you might even feel the mucus in your nose trying to move around as the air attempts to escape your nostrils — gross, but pretty interesting, too!
People who hum to communicate
Pirahã is an Indigenous language spoken by fewer than 500 people. The Pirahã people live along a tributary of the Amazon River called the Maici River in northwest Brazil, and their language is largely regarded as one of the simplest tongues known to humankind. Its limited use of linguistic elements allows its speakers to communicate via humming, as well as yelling, singing, and whistling. You know when you’re trying to talk with a mouth full of food or while brushing your teeth and it comes out as a sort of rhythmic hum? The Pirahã language is a little like that — except its speakers actually understand what they’re saying to each other.
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