Why would a person with conductive hearing loss hear the tuning fork through bone conduction longer than or equally as long as through air conduction? 3. All sounds for speech vibrate at different frequencies, which is how you differentiate speech sounds. Vowels are relatively low in pitch, while consonants such as l, m, and n are in the middle range of pitches. Many speech sounds such as s and f are high in pitch. How would speech understanding be affected by a person with moderate to severe high frequency sensorineural hearing loss?