Comments on: New sounds I can hear really well

By: Mog

Mog — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:58:36 +0000

Hi Sara
I so understand what you mean about accents. I moved to Canada 3 years ago and have had to learn to lipread in Canadian, which means not only the accent but the phrasing and words. I find it hard. At college there were two tutors, one Nigerian and the other Sri Lankan, who the Canadians found hard to follow, I found them easier than some Canadian accents though as they were accents I was used to hearing plus they spoke British English rather than Canadian.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:49:02 +0000

I love seeing what’s new on the sound front with you…. Funny how some sounds that we are hearing more clearly for the first time might bother one of us but not the other and vice versa.

I don’t know what it is about a British accent but I’ve always found it much easier to lipread/understand than many of the southern men I’ve grown up around who tend to mumble and not ennuciate so much. It’s such a distinct accent… I think I picked it up from my mom’s soaps when I was a kid because I didn’t have much experience speaking to anyone British before college. One year I worked at a summer camp and could easily lipread (no hearing aids) my friend from England when we were swimming when I couldn’t understand anyone else! The Australian kids I worked with were another story… I never could understand Fiona or Richard, but I sure adored them anyway and they put up with me looking at them cluelessly all summer.

Are you getting any major static sounds when around computers and air conditioning (or any major electrical?)

By: Nabeel

Nabeel — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 03:54:55 +0000

Very interesting stuff! Glad it’s going well for you. I still don’t like the plastic bag noises… blechhhh!

By: Rachel

Rachel — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:09:02 +0000

That’s great, Sara! I’m glad the CI was such a good match for you.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:37:34 +0000

I see a tendency toward the high pitches getting clearer. My loss is strongest in the midrange – voice range. I wonder if I’m a candidate for CI?

By: Sara

Sara — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:38:31 +0000

I’ve found with accents if I know to expect an accent then it’s a lot easier for me to understand them. There was this loud woman one place I worked and I could tell she was very loud but I still couldn’t understand a word she was saying. Finally one morning she said “Good Morning” to me individually and I realized she was British! After that, much easier to understand because my brain was aware of what to look for lipreading.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:30:47 +0000

“could understand the the girl fine despite her accent” This, I find VERY interesting!

I’ve noticed a similar effect myself. There are people at work who speak English with quite strong accents (e.g. from Asia or East Europe) and pre-CI, I could hardly understand a word they said, much less lip-read them. Post-CI, they are way, way easier to understand. I guess it indicates that the critical sounds in English and, possibly, other languages are in the high frequencies; the consonants rather than the vowels.

This was completely unexpected to me.

I still have trouble with a lot of regional British accents despite being born and bred there!