Friday, February 23, 2007

Repeat your name please

One of the most frustrating things about hearing impairment is that you can't distinguish the consonants that are so important in speech intelligibility. It's not a big deal that I can't always tell whether the Wheel of Fortune contestant is asking Vanna to show them a T or P, N or M, S or F. But it gets irritating and stupid when I call somebody by the wrong name because I didn't hear the first letter clearly. For a long time I thought the name of the cute blonde on Star Trek was Tess, as in Dick Tracy's girlfriend. Remember Tess Trueheart? Nope, it's Kes. If you live or work with a hearing impaired person who seems slow to respond to you, it may be that they are trying to figure out what you said so they don't give a goofy response.

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