2 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
bit of a vent but also question: Has anyone tried learning another language while dealing with hearing issues?
I have extremely slight hearing/speech issues, like enough to bother people but not enough to be a diagnosis. I lisp on the th sound in English, mispronounce words at random, and I genuinely cannot tell the difference between many slight sources of argument in the English language, such as milk melk malk[1]. Which I guess is kinda where my lisp issues come from as, to this day, I cannot hear a difference between "th" and f-, so I think I just never learned it... Three and three sounds exactly the same but everyone else swears it is a huge difference. If there's a lotta noise it's just all scrambled to me. So I just generally avoid social situations and speaking.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty62YzGryU4&ab_channel=JulianSmith
I've been learning Spanish off-and-on and sometimes I wonder if I should just give up, as I can't speak my own language. It just feels like it'd be very handy to have, but what's the point if I can't hear in the first place? The only rewarding lingual interactions I have are written.
Comment by Grigori_the_Lemur at 07/01/2025 at 11:07 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I hear you! Ha. Ha. ha... (ahem, okay bad joke) I was born with pretty poor hearing - above 1Khz drops to nothing and the rest is 65-75%. Self taught lip-reader, and they did not realize how bad it was until I was eight (they all thought I was slow and a jerk, but no, just a jerk). Had much speech therapy to help learn "L"s and to fix a lot of little things. It was the 70's... they were not as on the ball back then.
Do NOT give up! Do NOT assume you cannot! You totally can.
I took 1-1/2 years Spanish, and am about 2 months into Russian. It is a tad more problematic than Spanish, but we'll see where this goes.
If it is not too personal, 1) Do you have hearing aids? 2) Have you ever had speech therapy?
Comment by [deleted] at 03/01/2025 at 18:37 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]