I have a low talker in my world. She is the mother of one of my kids friends and I see her at school events all the time.
Since I’m not a waitress or other worker who NEEDS to hear what she is saying, I just smile and nod. But in my head I’m screaming "MAKE IT STOP!!!’
I work with a “low talker.” I’ve grown to understand his mumbles more and more. If there’s background noise, however, it’s pretty difficult.
My husband used to have the most booming voice you can imagine. He could project like no one I’ve ever seen. He ewas diagnosed with Parkinson’s about eighteen months ago, and his voice is one of those things that’s going. By evening, I can barely hear what he is saying, and he cannot make it louder. He doesn’t realize his voice is failing, so when I ask him to repeat, he thinks he is saying it louder, but the voice just can’t do it anymore.
So, could it be a medical issue?
When I walk into a room, everybody suddenly stops talking, and looks at me, and then they all lean closer to eachother and start talking to each other very sotto voce, and glancing over at me. What’s wrong with them all?
did you remember to put pants on?
I’m getting right to that point!
James Thurber had a fun essay about the things he would imagine he’d seen when he wasn’t wearing his glasses. For me, the things that I imagine I hear are often quite amusing.
My papa, in his deafness, became a “shouter.” “HEY, GOOD MORNING!” way, way too loud.
Not wanting to be a shouter, I’m perhaps overcompensating and becoming a mumbler. I take it to be (slightly) the lesser of the two evils.
We are definitely on the hook to wear the puffy shirt.
My husband is a mumbler and a low talker. I actually had my hearing tested to make sure it wasn’t my hearing. It drives me nuts. I think it’s because he’s an introvert and dislikes attention. Speaking up feels like shouting to him.
The part that drives me batty is when you ask the low talker to repeat what they just said only more loudly because you couldn’t hear them, and they repeat what they said at exactly the same low volume! HELLO?!
My uncle mumbles very quietly, when I was younger I would say excuse me and try to make him speak up, but I haven’t bothered for a long, long while. When we meet we shake hands, he mumbles something, I smile and say some generic conversation filler and move on to my more engaging relatives. Its a bit sad, he seems like a pleasant enough man, and my aunt is always so bubbly and sweet.
His mode of speaking has had consequences for him, he was employed as a librarian and was laid off, partly I believe because people complained that they couldn’t understand him when they asked for help.
The trick to dealing with repeat low-talkers is, after you have done the “Excuse me?” and “Couldn’t quite catch that; could you repeat it?” a few times:
Deliberately mishear them. If they’re really obnoxious, mishear something slightly embarrassing.
mumble mumble
“Excuse me, didn’t quite catch that?”
mumble mumble mumble
“Oh! Anal warts!”
Trust me, they’ll speak thereafter.
I think they’re way cool!!
Wait, your uncle was a librarian who got laid off for not being loud enough? I think my head just exploded. 
waves hand I may be one of the people you’re complaining about. There’s another side to the story, so please…hear me out. 
I don’t actually speak more quietly than other people, for the most part; I’ve actually made comparisons using a decibel meter. Nor do I generally mumble. I articulate clearly. So, why do people have trouble hearing what I say? Something about my voice–pitch, timbre, some combination of factors–makes it blend into background noise very easily. Even if there’s only a little hum of conversation or a noisy phone connection, it’s harder to hear me than the next guy. If I notice that people are having trouble, I make an effort to increase volume or shift registers to something that carries better. It can be rough on my throat to sustain that for a prolonged conversation, though.
So I, at least, am not doing it to out of shyness, or as some sort of power play, or just to piss you off. It’s just the way my voice is.
I have this issue also, most especially on the phone. I can raise my voice to be heard in a face to face situation (except really loud places like nightclubs), but over the phone is somehow a lost cause. I’ve had people say they can barely hear me, so I start shouting into the receiver and they still say they can barely hear me. It’s really annoying.
Or, if they’re like me, they’ll just get embarrassed and stop talking to you altogether (which, I guess, solves the issue)
internet psychologizing here - I think that if a person grew up in a controlling, manipulative household (or spent a lot of time in that kind of situation), they may tend to see everything through that prism and think that everything other people do is a a power play and an attempt to control and manipulate them.
“When you are an ACTOR, you must LEARN to PROJECT your VOICE, so that you can say, 'Of COURSE I am ELIGIBLE for FOOD STAMPS!!!”
~Steve Sweeney