Morse code?

good answer markbowen, but to say "everyone around him would have to learn it" is no problem if the people really cared about him. It's just like people learning sign language for deaf love ones.

The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.

That is still a slow system because it still involves waiting.

Active system where you don't have to wait would be faster. Like a technique using eye tracking or a Brain-computer interface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface).

Stephen Hawking's computer also supports Eye Tracking as a way of speaking.

Stephen Hawking: "Before the operation, my speech had been getting more slurred, so that only a few people who knew me well, could understand me. But at least I could communicate. I wrote scientific papers by dictating to a secretary, and I gave seminars through an interpreter, who repeated my words more clearly. However, the tracheotomy operation removed my ability to speak altogether. For a time, the only way I could communicate was to spell out words letter by letter, by raising my eyebrows when someone pointed to the right letter on a spelling card. It is pretty difficult to carry on a conversation like that, let alone write a scientific paper.

However, a computer expert in California, called Walt Woltosz, heard of my plight. He sent me a computer program he had written, called Equalizer. This allowed me to select words from a series of menus on the screen, by pressing a switch in my hand. The program could also be controlled by a switch, operated by head or eye movement. When I have built up what I want to say, I can send it to a speech synthesizer.