What was he saying?

I can't understand my husband on the phone. His voice is deep, and it sounds like it all melds together.

Mostly though, I have a problem when more than one person is speaking.

In a group, I really have a hard time. Just all chatter.

Chai - sounds like my hearing.

Some people's voices, I just can't listen too.
My eyes immediately glaze over.
And I just nod my head while planning my escape.
Course, that's not a hearing problem.
It's more of lack of attention to a certain pitch of droning....

Chai, Caribou - any specific actors?

hmmmm... I can't seem to think of any right now.
But foriegn accents do make me turn the volume up louder

I can understand what you are saying about Dustin though...

I have difficulties with southern accents - Alabama, Georgia, Carolinas, Louisiana - it sounds almost foreign to me.

British/Irish accents throw me. It takes awhile before they kick in. "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" drove me crazy because I didn't understand a single line that was spoken. One guy stands out, Dexter Fletcher. He's adorable but it's as if he's speaking a foreign language.

No actors come to mind, but if something like 20% of the population had invested in speech therapy, I might have saved $2,600.00 on a hearing aid for the good ear.

Anyway, television and movie theater sound quality deviates from normal just enough that that is the quickest way to find out if your hearing is going. Take care of them, littlek. You'll get more impatience from ol mushmouth than sympathy.

Me too!




Again, me too! Especially english. i tend to be able to catch a lot of irish, provided it isn't too country-Irish.

I can't hear all sorts of people, even friends who can't hear well themselves. They mumble too - or speak softly looking away - amazingly often. A lot of us learned to be softspoken as we were growing up, or learned the finesse of throwaway lines, or learned to murmur asides to deal with stuff.

Others I hear easily, people who seem to use their whole voice, whatever that means. My business partner, for example, never a problem hearing her.

I stop saying 'what?' after a while.

My whole family mumbles.

hmm...can't think of a specific actor right now, I'll have to think about it.

I'll be back

When I moved to Florida, I was faced with accents from all over the country. It took me a long time to understand the accents, especially those from the deep South.

My husband has a problem with hearing. When we play DVDs, he puts on the subtitle track. My hearing is not bad, but it has reached a point where I am beginning to rely on the subtitles, just out of habit. I find them particularly valuable when I am watching a British film, which I find particularly difficult to understand.

Anything British that shows up on PBS. They'll be going along fine, and
then everyone drops an octave and starts running words together. Very
dramatic, but totally incomprehensible to me.

Yep. It's what provides the capacity to watch Monty Python a million times. I still hear something new every time.

My grandmother could always understand me and my brother, but none of the females.

Slowly, everyone in my family is starting to complain about enunciation.

Oh yeah, Monty Python.

Wot?

For me it's not so much the accent, but the cadence.

Reading with interest but since the advent of captions (lovely, lovely captions) I pretty much never lipread actors and can't remember who was a problem back in the day. I totally see how Dustin Hoffman would be a problem, though. He has two modes -- deadpan mumbling or big grin.

Littlek (and others with not-so-great hearing), do you know about open captioned movies? Not captioned DVDs/ videos, which are also lifesavers, but first-run, big-screen movies that are captioned in the theater. There are far more available than I go to, will start doing it more as sozlet gets older probably. Here are a couple of resources for finding 'em:

http://www.insightcinema.org/films_statesN-R.html
http://www.fomdi.com/