Speak LOUDER, not closer!

The BBQ Pit
1

New pet peeve.

A bit of background: I have some hearing loss. How much I do not know. I am working on scheduling a hearing test when work settles down enough I’m able to actually request a particular day off (retail holidays are hell). MOST people have been pretty decent when I mention I have some hearing loss.

Now let’s look in on my Widows’ Group. A nice group of ladies, as we’ve all joined a club no one wants to join, that of someone who has lost a loved one. We meet once a week to commiserate and help each other. Great, right?

Just had a new person come in. I’ll call her June (not her real name). June is clearly from the south based on her accent and like many southern women of her generation tends to be very soft spoken. Which is fine. Except I can’t hear her. And when I say “I’m sorry, I’m a little hard of hearing, could you speak louder please?” she doesn’t speak louder, she leans in and speaks even softer. So it’s even MORE difficult to hear her.

WHY THE FUCK DO PEOPLE DO THIS???

What thought process leads you to speak even softer to someone who just told you they need you to speak LOUDER?

June did this to me again yesterday at a community get together. Everyone else at our table was speaking loudly enough to be heard above the ambient noise (and probably half those at the table had hearing aids and half the rest might arguably get some use out of a set, including yours truly) but June wound up sitting largely silent because people got tired of asking her to SPEAK UP.

At one point June told me to bring my chair closer to hers, but I was also having a conversation with Ellen on my other side who is in her 90’s who also told June she couldn’t hear her at all: “Young lady, you need to speak up!” (As the eldest person at the gathering yesterday Ellen called everyone “young lady” or “young man” even if said person is in their 80’s. Ellen is also still able to live on her own, walks without need of assistance, and is mentally sharp as a whip. Exactly the sort of old lady I hope to live long enough to become.)

My mother-in-law - another southern lady of an older generation - used to do the same exact goddamned thing. So I’m wondering if there’s some sort of cultural element here.

My late spouse and I solved the mother-in-law problem by simply not responding to what we couldn’t hear, so MIL learned that if she wanted something she actually had to speak up so she would be heard. (Spouse led that effort, the person in question being his mother so he took the heat on that one until everyone came to a working solution.)

June, on the other hand… sigh… We have other soft-spoken ladies in the Widows’ group but they speak loudly enough to be audible, and will speak louder if needed/asked.

But, honestly, WTF is up with this? My MIL and June are not the only people where I’ve encountered this. It’s always an older woman. “Hey, I have trouble hearing, could you speak louder please?” Then the other person leans in and speaks even softer. “I’m sorry, could you please speak louder.” Other person fucking whispers.

What. The. Fuck.

2

Can’t help much, but maybe can commiserate.

Somewhere as a child they’re trained that polite ladies never speak up; it’s boorish. Later as young women they learn that everyone leans in and listens carefully when they speak more quietly. Which helps them be the center of attention. I swear sororities are finishing schools for this High Society Southern Belle crap. If their parents had carefully primed them first it’s even worse. Although genteel real ladies of our parents’ generation certainly didn’t have to be Southern to be soft-spoken; anyone of manners and breeding, even if only as an aspirational pretension, did it.

It gets maladaptive later as they get older and quieter themselves, the world has gotten noisier, and their contemporaries (such as me) have gotten deafer.

My now-deceased fist wife was a naturally quiet talker. Not whisper-quiet awful about it, but just quiet. She could orate to a room just fine when needed, but generally did not. And was doubly quiet if she was sort of musing out loud while I was still nearby and expected to hear what she was thinking / saying. Gaah. FTR, she was New England-raised, but by a Mom who was always aspiring (read “pretending”) to a class and breeding she didn’t have but desperately wanted. Wife didn’t much care about class or breeding as such, but Mom’s voice lessons had been burned in deep.

When I’d bug wife about it she’d comply and speak up. But it always sounded to me like she felt something close to: “OK, I feel crude and impolite doing this but if you insist …” then she’d speak in what to me sounded like a normal to normal+ volume voice. All this decades before my own incremental hearing loss became an issue.

Question: Does June have a particularly high-pitched voice? Most folks hearing losses are concentrated in the high end, so if she’s a real soprano you’re more deaf to her than if she’s more of a tenor. Which she may not understand.

Last thought. If she’d a decent reasonable human being have you considered having one of your group do a one-on-one with her about this? You say she sat silently through her last meeting, all but excluded. Perhaps there’s room to have a low-emotion “man-to-man” talk about how much she’d be valued, if only she could be heard. And to have her rehearse not leaning in, but rather orating to the room.

She may well have felt hurt and miffed when left out, but again with the “Southern Breeding” thing going on was unwilling to articulate, if she even understood herself, her discomfort with the situation. Putting this out in the open 1-on-1 might, just might, give her emotional permission to alter her behavior.

Or she’s just an oblivious idiot and is therefore untrainable. If she’s content to sit in silence being ignored, so be it.

Good luck.

3

I have hearing loss. My right ear is totally shot, not worth using an aid. My left ear is bad, but I use a hearing aid.

When someone who knows about my hearing doesn’t speak loudly/clearly enough I just ignore them.

4

There certainly could be a cultural element or mode of upbringing that emphasizes that shouting (or just raising one’s voice beyond “normal” conversational levels is rude, and thus difficult to overcome even among people who need a bit more amplitude.

I have to say I find it refreshing that such people still exist, given the bellowing that commonly occurs in public.*

*One of Jackmannii’s Laws of Dining Out states that the person at the adjoining table with the most irritating voice also a) is the loudest, and b) monopolizes the conversation.

5

I would tend to believe that she, emotionally, cannot speak loudly. Not only is it ‘impolite and unladylike’ but if she is also rather shy and feels tentative about being welcomed into this new group. there is also a situation-specific reason why she feels unable to speak up.

For those of us brought up to bellow over the other noisy people in our families, it can be hard to empathize with shrinking violets, but it seems like that’s what she is. Some people find it extremely uncomfortable to draw attention to themselves.

6

At this point, “June” knows the score. If she chooses to continue on the way she has, simply smile when she says something but not reply. She’ll know why. The ball is in her court so waste no further energy on the issue.

7

I can relate to the OP. I have some hearing loss (I’ve been wearing hearing aids for about 7-8 years now), and my wife had this weird habit of speaking in a normal voice, but would speak a few words in the middle of a sentence really quietly (like it was a secret or something) then finish the sentence in her normal voice. Then when I would say “What?” she would only repeat the last part of the sentence. So I had to sort of train her to not drop her voice in mid-sentence for no reason, and I had to train myself to not just say “What?” but to say something like “I didn’t hear what you said after…” and repeat the part I heard.

Even with hearing aids, I still have to sometimes have someone repeat something they said a couple times before I understand them. Especially my grandkids, who tend to be a bunch of mumbling low-talkers.

8

I somewhat jokingly suggest you ask her to speak up like Garrett Morris:

“PLEASE SPEAK LOUDER I CANNOT HEAR YOU”

9

Hand her a microphone. Literally. Get a cordless mic for your group meetings, and just keep passing it to June with a friendly smile whenever somebody asks her to speak up.

Then even if she just can’t bring herself to raise her voice, the mic will raise it for her. If she’s too embarrassed to use the mic, she’ll have to learn either to speak up or get used to sitting silent.

Either way, she needs to dump her expectation that other people who can’t hear her normal voice will let her get right up in their faces to do her soft-talking. If there’s one thing the past three years ought to have taught us, it’s that you do not go around breathing on other people at close quarters any more than you absolutely need.

Now I’m thinking about the olden-days craze for “elocution teachers” back in the dawn of the modern communications era, who gave people lessons on how to speak with what were considered “standard” pitch and accent and enunciation. I’m wondering if there’s a market in this pandemic age for expanding that profession to instruct people

  • how to speak clearly and audibly across a 6’ distance
  • how to speak clearly and audibly through a mask
  • in audibility strategies for speaking to the elderly in our aging population
  • in Zoom conversation and/or microphone use etiquette and techniques
  • etc.
10

Or, of course, get Ken Dove.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ken+dove+-+monty+python&sxsrf=ALiCzsZQFSbfdRPViAYu2G2LvyP1Zdm0uQ%3A1671132948917&ei=FHebY8DPN7DC0PEP66GkmAk&ved=0ahUKEwjAqauur_z7AhUwITQIHesQCZMQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=ken+dove+-+monty+python&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzIFCCEQoAE6CAgAEIAEELADOgcIABAeELADOgkIABAIEB4QsAM6DQguEIAEEMgDELADGAE6BQguEIAEOgUIABCABDoGCAAQFhAeOgoIABAWEB4QDxAKOggIABAWEB4QCjoICCEQFhAeEB06BwghEKABEApKBAhBGAFKBAhGGABQtxBYqy5gsDBoAXAAeACAAWmIAacJkgEEMTMuMpgBAKABAcgBC8ABAdoBBAgBGAg&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:02d7cca4,vid:c5YEJaItFNo

or just go ahead to 1:53 here for Gumby Brain Specialist’s offings:

ETA: odd that the first link repeatedly won’t load - still clickable, anyway.

11

Let’s try pasting a link directly to the video on YouTube (and not a Google search) and see if that works:

12

I think you already answered your question.

Yes.

Same with my first wife. She is not deceased, but she was very quiet. (Unless she felt very comfortable, and then she was plenty loud. She’s definitely not quiet chatting with her ex-husband.)

She is from North Carolina, and had a bit of a twang in her speech. It is absolutely a cultural thing in my experience. Unless the person is in a job like customer service, food service, and so on, then you are more likely to get the ebullient “How you doin’ sugah?” sort of Southern speech.

I think that part of it though, is that the new person is self-conscious and is defaulting to how one is supposed to comport oneself in the presence of strangers. She might raise the volume once she gets used to people. Especially if she is repeatedly asked to.

13

It is possible she is what could be termed “painfully shy”, and calling her out for speaking quietly magnifies her anxiety.

14

Yeah, and given that this is a support group to help people for loss, it seems counterproductive to badger her about it. But rather, as I was suggesting, once she’s comfortable she might speak up more. Part of making someone comfortable is making them feel welcome and not self-conscious about the way they communicate.

It’s a tightrope for sure.

15

I wouldn’t badger her, but I also wouldn’t reply if I didn’t hear/understand what she’d said.

16

Nope. More of lower pitch bordering on whiskey-and-cigarettes growl.

Well… she’s been part of the group all of about 48 hours so no, we haven’t yet had the time to get that together…

17

I was thinking the same. All the ladies I encounter are well able to make themselves heard in the next county.

18

This is why I despise meetings of more than about 4 people. There will always be a few that won’t project and enunciate. Can’t make eye contact either. They look at notes in front of tehm and mumble to the piece of paper.

Hey, I know I have hearing problems, terrible awful tinnitus. The hearing aids help. But don’t mumble at the piece of paper in front of you when your in a meeting with 20 other people.

It’s why I eventually left the personnel board.

Some of this folks are shy or just timid about any public speaking I think. I know that’s a phobia for many.

A benefit from COVID is I’m working from home now. Most communication is done with the written word. As a side benifit, I now have a written record that I can refer back to.

19

My problem is that people will get angry when I ask them to repeat themselves multiple times because they don’t seem to understand that I need them to repeat themselves. For example, someone will walk up to me (already talking) and I’ll hear “mumble mumble mumble soup”
Me: what?
Them: chicken noodle soup?
Me: what’s the question?
Them: Chicken Noodle Soup
Me: What about it? I didn’t hear the question.
Them: How many?
Me: I didn’t hear any of what you said, I need you to repeat the entire question.

Them, getting annoyed: HOW. MANY. GALLONS. OF. CHICKEN. NOODLE. SOUP. DO. WE. HAVE. IN. BACK?
Or:
Them, getting annoyed: Forget it, I’ll just look myself
Me: I…[whatever]

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had to tell people that when I say “what?”, I need you to repeat the entirety of what you just said, not just some random words. I didn’t hear you, just start over from the beginning.
Over the years I’ve decided it’s not that my hearing is bad (though I don’t think it’s great), it’s my ADHD. I believe what’s happening is that I physically hear them, but until my brain realizes the person is talking to me, it’s not paying attention. In fact, that’s why I started this by mentioning that the person was walking up to me. It doesn’t happen mid conversation, it’s nearly always when I didn’t have any reason to know someone was about to ask me something.

I don’t know, but I’d bet if the person said my name before they asked the question, I’d have a better chance of hearing the whole thing.