this is kind of a weird question but I'm doing some insectoid worldbuilding and you were the first person that came to mind
If insects were able to have proper voices, would their mouthparts be able to articulate any human sounds?
We can speak with our mouths the way we do because our mouths lead right to our lungs. The insect respiratory system is laid out completely differently: they breathe through small holes called spiracles that line the sides of their body. Some arachnids at least can stridulate with their mouthparts, but without a way to force air through their mouths, they couldn't talk the same way we do. No air flow, no vowels!
Some insects can control their breathing with lung-like air sacs behind the spiracles. The aptly named Madagascar hissing cockroach makes its hisses that way.
There's also stridulation. Grasshoppers make sounds by rubbing their legs against their wings. Cicadas make sounds by rubbing their wings together. Bess beetles can make a wide variety of sounds for communication by rubbing different parts of their bodies together.
Taking those facts together, you could possibly get something going with the legs or wings interacting with the spiracles somehow. Stridulation for consonants, spiracles for vowels. Maybe even the spiracles would be enough--parrots do all their talking with just the syrinx, after all!
With all these spiracles, though, it might seem as though your insect person is speaking in many voices simultaneously. Neat!
