The word or phrase I am looking for is quite opposite to that of the situation when people, such as students or sports players, sing their national anthem with the same tone and words.
I want a single word or even phrase that can describe the situation when two or more people speak at the same time with different tone and words . . . and at the end, the listener cannot get what they are saying. This situation can be found while debating, telling a news about any incident or even while complaining.
Due to _____ , the teacher could not get what they are saying.
If it's not feasible to find a noun or phrase for such situation, then here I request to have an adverb standing alone to describe how they are speaking, for instance, what is the adverb for "at the same time"?.
Here is how, I want to convert sentence 1 into sentence 2.
They spoke at the same time, and the teacher could not get what they are saying.
They spoke _____ , and the teacher could not get what they are saying.
Best Answer
If you are interested in a single word, consider babel:
Not to be confused with babble, although it can be used as a synonym.
Your question is also open to phrases. The phrase talk over each other is most common in situations where more than one person are trying to make their point to either each other or to the same listener, but are not letting each other finish before speaking themselves. However, it seems to be a close match to the situations you posit.
However, the word simultaneously is a good single word to replace the phrase at the same time.
While perhaps more commonly used, babble is not specific to multiple people, and connotes rapidity in speech which is not part of your description. This difference in precision is likely unimportant in your example usage, since the usage context should sufficiently make clear the intended meaning.
The mass noun definition of babble makes it a near synonym to babel:
However, babble has a singular form:
And its verb form specifically calls for rapid speech:
Babel is particularly appropriate in the case that there are multiple conversations being spoken simultaneously in more than one language, but the multi-lingual aspect of it is only to more closely match the Biblical metaphor.
More about the myth of the Tower of Babel can be found on Wikipedia.
In common usage, it just refers to the incomprehensible noise of many people talking.
It is interesting to note that although babel and babble sound similar and have similar definitions, they are not etymologically related. Babel was taken from the Bible, and was a translation of the Hebrew name for a city that was referring to Babylon.
Origin section of ODO
Etymology section of Wikipedia
Etymonline
On the other hand, babble seems to come to English from the German word babbelen, perhaps from Latin babulus or Greek barbaros, and probably originated as onomatopoeia of baby-talk.
Origin section of ODO
Etymonline