If I want to understand speech, I have to hear it, or see it, or use an exquisitely-performed marriage of the two. How I decide on the ratio of hearing-to-seeing depends on the speaker and the medium.
For example, the telephone uses 100% hearing because I do well with the voice coming directly into my ear, and with the volume control standing by. But when I’m watching TV, I must use closed captions at the same time as I watch and listen to the actors, making it two parts seeing to one part hearing. I control the process; I put all the elements in place – captioning, sound, and a clear picture – and then hold my nose and jump feet first into understanding what’s being said. Generally it works out well, because I’m a very good speechreader especially with people whose speech patterns are familiar to me.
But when strangers speak, my speechreading success rate goes down because I have no control over the elements.
Speechreading is the ability to understand a spoken message through observing the movements of a person’s lips, jaw, tongue and teeth, interpreting facial expressions and body language, and knowing the context of what’s being discussed.
It sounds exhausting, and sometimes it is. After a long day of focusing, visually and furiously, on what’s being said, people with hearing loss can become exhausted. Speechreading is a multi-faceted process – and a skill that can be sharpened with practice.
It’s easiest with people we know, such as family or friends or workmates. But when I’m in new surroundings, which is often, or conversing with people who speak differently than what I’m used to, which is frequently, understanding the speech of strangers can be challenging. And it’s not always clear if the difficulty lies in hearing the bits of speech delivered in a different accent – or whether the words themselves are new to me.
This week, visiting with family in California, my daughter-in-law Kristina and I were discussing her spirited 3 ½ year old son. Actually, ‘spirited’ was my word, her choice was different.
He’s being onree.
Uh, he’s being – what?
ON-ree. (Blank face from me.) ON-REE!
I’m not getting it – spell it for me.
O-R-N-…
Oh, ornery!
Even though I had the context (her child’s spirited behavior), and am familiar with Kristina’s speech pattern, the American pronunciation delivered in her slight accent was different enough (to my Canadian ears) to render the word incomprehensible. And she had raised her voice because we both assumed that my hearing loss was causing the communication glitch.
And usually it is, when delivered by someone with an unfamiliar speech pattern. But now that I know the word ornery, how it sounds in American, I’ll understand it next time I hear it. That’s another component of speechreading skill – learning the sound and the look of new words. (And really, what other word could I mistake it for? What other English word sounds likes on-ree? Unless perhaps the phrase ‘on three’, as when nurses are about to lift you onto a gurney on the count of three. There’s also the French name ‘Henri’, but unless we are talking about little French kids, onree has only one meaning in our family.)
But when strangers speak to us, the people with hearing loss, all bets are off. Sometimes we do fine, sometimes not. But if their words aren’t as clear as spring water, we either piece things together quickly, or utter one of our favorite words, the one that melts off our tongue like butter on a bun – pardon?
In certain situations, we can guess what strangers are going to say. Arriving at the airport, the ticket agent says something that’s longer than ‘hello’ and her voice rises at the end, indicating a question. But she could be asking ‘And how are you, today?’ OR ‘And where are you going today?’ I usually answer ‘Fine, thank you’, because if she can’t look at my ticket and tell where I’m flying, then she’s in the wrong job. Besides, I travel a lot and I know the routine.
Most strangers-with-accents are speechreadable if they articulate their consonants – which give meaning to speech just as vowels provide the power – similarly to native English speakers (English being the language I speak). On occasion I’ve struggled to speechread a speaker only to discover that he was speaking Korean or Portuguese or some other language. On the other hand, my family finds it hilarious when, watching a TV show, I ask ‘is that person speaking English?’ Sometimes the accents and speech formation are so different that it looks and sounds like another language. In my 20’s, I decided to resume studying French, which I had loved in school. I quit the lessons after two weeks; I knew my hearing was getting worse because I had trouble speechreading the teacher, let alone the other participants whose French was abominable. How to speechread merci when it came out ‘Marcey’, or vous when pronounced ‘vooze’?
So what do we do, as people with hearing loss who use speechreading in daily conversations, when conversing with strangers? The same as we normally do: identify as having a hearing loss, have the speaker face us and ask for repeats when we need them. Our motto should be Verify and Clarify: “Just to be clear, you said that my boarding gate is over there to the left?”
When strangers speak, we want to speak with them.
