speak

speak, talk, converse can all mean to articulate words so as to express one's thoughts.

Speak is, in general, the broad term and may refer to utterances of any kind, however coherent or however broken or disconnected, and with or without reference to a hearer or hearers

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not able to speak above a whisper

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I shall speak to him about it

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let him speak for the organization

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most of the material in this book was spoken before it was printed, as may perhaps be inferred from the style— Davis

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she repeated them, angered . . . but once the words were spoken she was sorry— McCullers

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the Bellman looked scared, and was almost too frightened to speak— Lewis Carroll

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Talk, on the other hand, usually implies an auditor or auditors and connected colloquy or discourse

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he left the room because he did not care to talk

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we talk in the bosom of our family in a way different from that in which we discourse on state occasions— Lowes

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she talked and talked and talked, yet it seemed to Marjorie that she could never hear enough of this girl's worldly wisdom— Wouk

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But speak is also used of relatively weighty or formal speech (often public speech), and talk, of what is more or less empty or frivolous

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a fool may talk, but a wise man speaks— Ben Jonson

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a good old man, sir; he will be talking—Shak.

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yet there happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking .... No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered— Ben Jonson

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Converse implies an interchange in talk of thoughts and opinions

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in the press conference the President can converse with the public rather than preach to it— Cater

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don't ever remember hearing my parents converse, and they never even chatted. My father would expound on law and ritual, my mother would listen— Behrman

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Analogous words: pronounce, *articulate, enunciate: *stammer, stutter: *discourse, expatiate, dilate, descant