I heard a great little piece tonight on NPR about beatboxing and linguists interest in it. Unfortunately I couldn't find the discussion online. However, I did find this article. I am sure NPR was referencing this same USC report (in the Journal of Acoustical Society of America). The NPR report talked about linguists thinking that people have trouble with sounds that aren't part of their native language. However, beatboxing seems to push those boundaries.

By the way, the article cited above was an excellent example of research in linguistics. Indeed, the authors received an NIH grant to conduct the study, and while they only had one subject, they systematically studied the sounds through a series of MRI recordings.

I didn't know what a beatbox was, but then I remembered watching a video on throat singing, and remembered a demo of it therein: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfEp67sRZNI Having practiced throat singing enough to at least get the basics down, I can assure y'all you DO make some sounds that aren't in your normal speech repertoire.

I hated to admit it because I thought I'd be judged, but I too hadn't heard of beatboxing. Thank goodness I am not the only one! I heard them singing (? beating?) on NPR, and it's quite the sound.