what kind of an accent would a person who’s born deaf have?
for that matter, how do you teach someone who’s been deaf since birth, to speak?
i’m sure similar topics have been discussed here before, but the new board didn’t turn up any relevant search results…
i’m so glad to be back at the 'dope…
I don’t think this would be considered an accent but rather a speech impediment. The last time I took classes a Galllaudet, the method for helping deaf children to learn how to make audible words was by placing their hands on the throats of hearing people and feeling the vibrations that resulted from speaking certain words. The child would then attempt to duplicate this vibration by placing his hand on his own neck and hopefully (after much practice) the resulting audible sound would be a reasonable approximation of the spoken word.
Basically, the deaf child needs to use his hand as an eardrum/diaphram to receive the acoustical energy coming from the speaker, and the transmission medium is not the air but rather the body (via physical contact).
Yes, they have an accent. Usually one where those light sounding things aren’t pronounced. You know, ‘s’ ‘th’ Etc.
Those who know the accent know that I’m deaf right away. Those that don’t, ask, then I say that I have a french, spanish or swedish accent depending on how much fun I want to have.
I have two cousins who were born deaf. They are both adults, and both speak. I never thought of the sound of a deaf speaker as having an accent, but now that you mention it, xash, I guess the distinctive sound could be called an accent.
Understanding a deaf speaker is a little like understanding a thick foreign accent. You just have to listen carefully. When you get used to it, it just sounds normal.
A deaf person once told me it was sometimes possible to tell where a person was from by the style of signing (leaving alone differences in international sign languages). May be New Yorkers sign with big arm movements very fast?
Although I was born severely-to-profoundly deaf, I’ve been told that my speech is virtually indistinguishable from that of a normal hearing person’s…which makes me wonder if I’m really the best person to answer this question.
However, en route to becoming an audiologist, I had to take a boatload of speech-language pathology courses.
It’s not so much an “accent”…at least not in the way that I think of an accent. “Deaf speech” is often primarily characterized by a tonal quality that is strongly nasal. Handy mentioned that some sounds may not be clearly pronounced, particularly the /s/ sound, the /z/ sound, the unvoiced /th/, and the voiced /th/ sounds. The reason for that is because those sounds are among the softest sounds in the English language, and are among the highest frequency sounds in the English language, so that even hearing aids will have great difficulty picking them up. (The /f/ sound is actually softer in average acoustical power, but doesn’t seem to pose as much of a difficulty since it’s such a cinch to lip-read. Unfortunately, the /f/ and /v/ sounds look identical when lip-reading. Same goes for the /p/ and /b/ sounds.)
That’s probably the reason why the /s/ sound was the bane of my existence when I was a kid. It probably wasn’t until I was about 7 years old that I finally got a firm handle on that phoneme.
I was recently reading some book or another where there was a mini bus full of deaf teenagers, which was hijacked by some bad guys. The book described a radical group of deaf people who absolutely refused any attempt at vocalization, refused cochlear implants, completely avoided people who could hear, and had the highest stature if they were deaf children of deaf parents.
Is there such a group, and, if so, what would be the rationale for refusing corrective surgery? Also what kind of hearing loss can a cochlear implant cure?
I recently read some book or another about a mini bus full of deaf teenagers, which was hijacked by some bad guys. According to the book there is an association of radical deaf people who refuse lip reading, vocalization of any kind, cochlear implants, any association with people able to hear, and who bestow the highest stature on the deaf children of deaf parents.
Is there really such an association, and if so what rationale could there be for refusing corrective surgery - surely they wouldn’t think it was better to be deaf? Also what kind of hearing loss can a cochlear implant cure?
Ring, I hope someone better qualified will add to this, but I have heard of some deaf people whose self-esteem and self-confidence is at a point where their feeling is “Okay, I’m deaf. So what? I have no problems managing, and I’m not going to change myself just cuz you think I’m disabled.”
Back to the OP, I understood it differently than everyone else here. Sure, there are characteristics by which the speech of many (not all) deaf people differs from hearing people. But when you use the word “accent”, I interpreted the OP to mean something very different: If a born-deaf person learns to speak in England, and a similar born-deaf person learns to speak in the States, will their speech patterns reflect the accents of their teachers?
Sign language is indeed regional. I have a book of regional US signs. Deaf NYers do sign fast.
Deaf vocal accents should also reflect where they are from.
After having some wine I can talk as clear as a hearing person. I never figured that one out. Sigh.
you guys are the greatest… long live the straight dope!
yay… it’s so good to be back…
thanks for all your answers…offered me amazing insights into the lives of deaf persons…
Keave, yes i would love to hear an answer to that angle… if not the accent of their teachers, atleast maybe a function of the accent of their region… or maybe ( wild speculation ) accent is a gene thing such that two different people taught by the same person might have very different accents, and/or that the accents are similar across similar regions such that you can tell by their accents where they are from ( as we do with people in the normal course of things ) ?
Its funny you asked about how deaf people talk. Most of the time people call them,’ deaf & mute’, which implies they can’t talk, but this is one of those rare times someone actually knew they can talk. the only ‘mute’ people I ever met were hearing people. They got that way from surgery.
There was a movie “sound and fury” recently which dealt with that controversy. See http://www.thirteen.org/pressroom/soundfury/debate.html and embedded link
“According to the book there is an association of radical deaf people who refuse lip reading, vocalization of any kind, cochlear implants, any association with people able to hear,”
Call them Deaf.
‘deaf’ with a big ‘D’