To provide a telephone which switches over a voice talking mode and a character calling mode without interrupting the conversation and without relying on the manual operation by a user.

The telephone comprises a speaker 22, a character data display 25, a voice to character converter 16, and a sound sensor 23 for measuring the level of surrounding noise. The telephone decides whether the noise reaches a fixed level. If reaching, the telephone spreads the party's voice from the speaker 22, converts it to characters, and also shows the characters on the display 25.