Huh? What?
Right there is when youâd lose me as a listener. âUmâ is almost as annoying as âyou know, youknow, you know.â
There are some days where I seriously just cannot understand people, and some days I have huge trouble reading. I think I actually start falling asleep or something itâs hard to tell.
Seriously, some days I can read a whole book in one sitting, no issues. Some days I can read a single paragraph 10-20 times and just not get it. Itâs really frustrating. Itâs the same for hearing. Some days I can understand a thick-accented mumbler in a crowded mall, other days no matter how much effort I expend I canât understand anybody. Usually the first time I say âsorry, I didnât catch that.â If it still doesnât work after really trying the second time I say âSorry, I just canât understand you right now. Iâm really sorry.â
I know it bothers people, but I just canât some days. I expend all my effort into listening (or reading) and I just get blank space. Itâs as if I know the person started talking, and I know they stopped talking (or I know my eyes started at the beginning of the paragraph, and stopped at the end), but I canât fill in that middle part no matter how much effort I expend. Itâs like it never happened, I feel like Iâm missing time. As I said in the first paragraph, itâs almost like I fell asleep. And again, some days â and sometimes earlier in the same day (though once it starts it happens throughout the rest of the day) Iâll be fine, be able to read really fast and can hear and comprehend really well. Other times I⌠well, I just canât. Itâs really, really embarrassing.
I donât have any neurological disorders or learning disabilities that I know of either. I doubt I have anything since it only happens some days and not others (most days Iâm fine).
You might lose me as âSomeone Worth Talking Toâ, too. If you just say âWhat?â I have no idea what you missed. Do I have to start all over and repeat a whole paragraph? Or was it just a word?
Iâm hard of hearing, and I often have to ask for clarification. But I try really hard to think back over what was said and then say âSorry, I missed that last sentence.â
People talking on their cell phones on the bus always say âuh?â instead of âhuh?â I donât know why.
In that example youâre not listening anyway. Itâs just noise so youâll look at me and maybe start listening. Like clearing your throat. Perhaps more than once, until your listener is actually looking at you. It gives hard of hearing people a moment to focus their attention on listening, because theyâre very likely to miss it the first time. So donât actually say anything the first time. Just make noise, get their attention, give 'em a moment, then say what you
huh?
I said youâre putting on weight asshole!
My mother does this to me, and it drives me nuts. Her "what?"s are reflexive. Sometimes sheâll say âwhat?â, followed almost immediately by her understanding and responding to whatever it is I said, once her brain caught up. Iâve stopped in the middle of saying something to her because I can tell that her mind has blanked and sheâs waiting for me to finish my sentence so she can ask âwhat?â She claims she canât hear, yet sheâll do things that are counterproductive to a person who canât hear, like not looking directly at someone who is speaking to her, or asking questions of someone in another room. So when she says âwhat?â, I just yell whatever I said at her, or I get her attention first with a âMA!â before I say anything. She hates it, but itâs her fault. I only have so much energy in a day to devote to talking, and I just canât abide having to repeat every damn thing I say.
I suffer from this problem. I supposedly have excellent hearing (had an audiology test done in 2011 and passed with flying colors), but I have a very difficult time understanding people. Whenever Iâm in a crowded room or a noisy environment, I often have to ask people to repeat themselves because even though I evidently have good hearing, I have a very difficult time filtering out the noise and processing what was said to me. I feel bad about saying, âwhat was that?â or âwhat?â all the time but I figure thatâs more polite than just pretending like I hear them and nod politely (which I do frequently enough as it is).
If it hadnât been for the results of that hearing test I had done a while back I honestly wonder sometimes if I am hard of hearing. But Iâm evidently not. Iâm just hard of comprehending, I guess. I do think some people have a point when they say that some people have difficulty turning off the internal chatter and just listening. I know I have a track record of having a busy mind and itâs difficult to turn off my own thinking and just listen.
It has gotten to the point where sometimes my âwhats?â are so reflexive that I say them immediately and quickly realize that I do understand what the person just said, and then respond appropriately.
I do apologize for this when it happens. Example: âWhat? Oh sorry⌠yeah I know what you mean.â So I do say Iâm sorry when I realize I threw in an unnecessary âwhat?â
I score great on hearing tests, but I dare you to try to talk to me in a crowded diner with forks and coffee cups clattering and music and other conversations going*.
I finally found an audiologist who agreed with me that theyâre terrible at testing hearing with interference. Theyâll paly white noise and then do their little tones, but I can discipline myself to not listen to the whoooosh and concentrate on the tones. It is NOTHING like a Real-Life Background Noise Situation.
So my doc admitted that I do have hearing loss, but it doesnât show up much in a hearing test environment. Unfortunately, he doesnât think hearing aids have progressed to the point where they can boost human speech but not background Clatter âNâ Chatter.
*Side note: anyone know if lip-reading would help in the local diner?
I think if youâre in a poor hear-ability environment thereâs no reason to think thereâs something wrong with you if you canât make things out. Thatâs like worrying why you get hot in the sauna. 
Crowded noisy place? Can anyone really hear all that well?
When I started watching TV with captions on, I was pretty amazed at how much dialogue flies right by completely lost, but the brain fills it in I guess and you donât notice.
I was also surprised at how awful captions usually are, because I can hear too.
It gets worse. I, too, have an auditory processing disorder, despite what was once exquisitely sensitive hearing. In addition to the usual difficulty in comprehending speech amid auditory clutter (something I know other people can do, because I see them doing it), years of motorcycle commuting (and other loud noises) have left me with tinnitus. Now, even in a quiet environment, I have to struggle to understand people speaking over the ringing in my own goddamn ears.
I have promised myself hearing aids for my 50th birthday, but Iâm really not expecting much.
Someone: BrumbmbblemrummbleâŚ
Me: What?
Someone: BrumbmbblemrummbleâŚ
Me (incredibly loud): NO, I DONâT WANT TO MAKE OUT WITH YOU!
Learn to enunciate, especially in noisy places. Just because you can hear yourself in your head doesnât mean everyone else can.
Yeah, they are being asses, because their first assumption is that the person is just being irritating. Yeah, Linctus should specify why he canât hear, but communication is a two way street, and if you are annoyed by someone, the onus is on you to try and clear up the annoyance. Itâs ridiculous to expect things to change if you just get all mad and talk to the person.
In fact, maybe I missed it, but I donât see that the OP ever said anything about sitting down and talking to these people about what they are doing that is bothering him. Iâd suggest he try that before going the route of this passive aggressive bullshit.
And, concerning those that actually are hard of hearing: Iâve noticed that my dad, who has had hearing problems since birth, didnât socialize much and thus didnât learn all these rules. I frankly canât remember ever being taught not wait until the end of a sentence nor not to say âHuhâ by itself. Itâs just something that comes natural.
I think itâs one of those things that used to be taught in bygone eras but really isnât now. I canât even imagine having my parents sit me down and discuss the specific words I used to talk to people. As long as I wasnât doing anything wrong (in the moral sense) they didnât get involved.
Huh? What?
If Iâm reading or otherwise concentrating on something, you need to get my attention before you start talking to me - otherwise it may be a few seconds before I realise youâre speaking, and then a couple seconds more before I realise youâre speaking to me. And like someone higher up the thread, I have high-frequency hearing loss, in my case due to having spent too much time in the engine room without hearing protection. (I tried hearing aids - there was something about my younger daughterâs voice that made the things buzz every time she said something to me.)
My wife has an incredible talent. Iâll miss part of what she says and ask for a repeat, and three out of four times sheâll repeat only the part that I did hearâŚ
Who reads the dates on posts? Itâs on page one of the forum, itâs obviously a recent threadâŚ
Well, some of us actually doâŚ
Also, you speak too fast, with insufficient enunciation. This is understandable: youâve said the same thing to ten thousand customers. âWould you like fries with that?â has turned into âWudjalikefriesifthat?â from repetition.
As it turns out, you happen also to speak with a slight accent.
Youâve probably ordered a million meals at McDâs and youâve heard wudjalikefriesifthat a million times so why the hell would you need to say huh? Really, reeeeeally short memory as well as hearing problems?
I know itâs a zombie thread, too, but this is probably my biggest pet peeve about my SO. My parents insisted I never say âHuh?â They found it rude and obnoxious. I didnât even say âWhat?â I learned âI beg your pardon?â or âSorry, I didnât hear you?â
Whatâs worst is when you say something, they say What? And then halfway through your repeating it they answer you. So of course they heard you, they just didnât bother to listen!
Far too many people have that same talent. :mad: