My sister thinks I am racist

[Caraway]

I hang up on my husband when he's mumbling. :tongue_smilie:

 

If you can't understand a person, really, what's the point?

 

 

A few months after I got married I went to have my hearing checked because I was convinced that I was going deaf. Turns out that my hearing was fine. I went home and told my DH that my diagnosis was that he mumbled!

 

 

I might disagree with this. We recently took our daughter for apptitude testing. It showed that she scored very high in the skill required to hear and speak languages. I think I would also score high, but my dh would be rather low. I can understand accents pretty well right off the bat, but my dh is horrible. He can't even hear the difference in the words pin, pan, and pen. I do think that some people are just poorly equipped to understand language that sounds much different from their own sound.

 

 

:iagree:

 

Even though my hearing is clinically fine, it is not like my husband's. My husband just hears *more* than I do. He excels in music and languages, two areas where I stink. I am convinced it is because he can hear subtle differences that I can't hear.

 

As an aside, my parents have known each other since my dad was 13 and moved from Texas to California. Family legend has always been that no one could understand my father's thick accent except for my mom's brother. A few years ago my dad and I were traveling cross country together. In a hotel in Texas he asked directions and the clerk asked him to repeat himself. I said "See Dad, they don't understand you here either!" :lol:

[Amber in AUS]

I don't think you are racist at all!! I certainly appreciate being able to understand the people i speak with and will often say, "I am sorry but i am having trouble understanding you with your accent. Can you please speak louder and slower." I have even asked to be transferred to someone else.

 

Most of out telco's outsource their call centres to India from Australia and that can be VERY difficult!!

 

I can only sympathise with you, you are not alone.

[IsabelC]

I don't think standard hearing tests pick up all the different hearing and/or auditory processing issues. I have always tested as having perfect hearing, yet I have a lot of trouble 'focussing' on what I'm listening to: I can hear fine if I'm talking to you face to face in a quiet room, but I'm lost trying to have a conversation over loud music, in a crowd, or on a cell phone with bad reception.

[hornblower]

I guess it would depend on the extent of hearing loss?

 

Because why would it be that my relative with hearing loss (needs to wear hearing aids in both ears), from another country, English is his second or third (I think german was 2nd) language, first learned it from British people so would probably consider that 'normal' though he doesn't speak with a British accent - he speaks with an Eastern European accent, can live in Canada and understand 'Canadian' accents as well as all the other immigrants who come here & speak with their accents? Can work professionally for over 30 years with people from India and Bangladesh and Korea and Thailand and the Philippines and China (Mandarin) and Hong Kong (Cantonese)?

 

Look - I'm not denying that people who are hearing impaired obviously have special challenges with verbal communication & I'm not accusing you of being racist when you request someone who speaks English "just like you do" ie with your accent. It sounds like you have very signficant hearing issues.

 

But I'm sharing my experience as a person in a family where well over 80% speak with an accent which differentiates us from the local population where we live (ie. most people in our family don't sound 'native') & I shared that when immigration dramatically increased in the Vancouver area, the attitudes towards accents changed and our community's overall ability to communicate increased.

 

So while there may be some people for whom it is difficult or impossible to understand a foreign accent, many people CAN do it if they try.

 

And I think the OP's sister raised a valid point. SOME people who demand to be served by people who speak "like them" are racist.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I

So while there may be some people for whom it is difficult or impossible to understand a foreign accent, many people CAN do it if they try.

 

 

 

A lot of it depends on what you have been exposed to. I can understand Asian accents very well, even when other people are having difficulty. But an accent from another part of the world can flummox me. Part of it is because I haven't learned what they substitute for certain common sounds in English.

 

Also - some people just do not speak clearly even in their native language. I've been known to ask telemarketers to "Please enunciate more clearly." But then I have to explain to them what "enunciate" means. . .:glare: There was a time when a person's education included elocution lessons. I say that subject needs to be resurrected!

[Mabelen]

I guess it would depend on the extent of hearing loss?

 

Because why would it be that my relative with hearing loss (needs to wear hearing aids in both ears), from another country, English is his second or third (I think german was 2nd) language, first learned it from British people so would probably consider that 'normal' though he doesn't speak with a British accent - he speaks with an Eastern European accent, can live in Canada and understand 'Canadian' accents as well as all the other immigrants who come here & speak with their accents? Can work professionally for over 30 years with people from India and Bangladesh and Korea and Thailand and the Philippines and China (Mandarin) and Hong Kong (Cantonese)?

 

Look - I'm not denying that people who are hearing impaired obviously have special challenges with verbal communication & I'm not accusing you of being racist when you request someone who speaks English "just like you do" ie with your accent. It sounds like you have very signficant hearing issues.

 

But I'm sharing my experience as a person in a family where well over 80% speak with an accent which differentiates us from the local population where we live (ie. most people in our family don't sound 'native') & I shared that when immigration dramatically increased in the Vancouver area, the attitudes towards accents changed and our community's overall ability to communicate increased.

 

So while there may be some people for whom it is difficult or impossible to understand a foreign accent, many people CAN do it if they try.

 

And I think the OP's sister raised a valid point. SOME people who demand to be served by people who speak "like them" are racist.

 

 

I think it is obvious that regular exposure to accents will help people become used to those and therefore ease communication. And it is true that some people who demand to be served by people with no foreign accents of any kind will be racist and xenophobic, but I don't think you can claim that someone who is simply having trouble following certain accents is either.

[Mekanamom]

Your sister could benefit from a linguistics class. Speech accents are not determined by race.

 

" It is, however, generally agreed that there are no strong genetic differences underlying the differences between languages: an individual will acquire whatever language(s) he or she is exposed to as a child, regardless of parentage or ethnic origin.[11]"

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics

[Laura Corin]

No.

 

I'm pretty good at understanding accents and foreign languages, but when we were in England, my husband had to translate the following for me:

 

"ould oo ike a ighnt or a aff ighnt?" It was all run together, a making it even harder to understand: "ouldooikeaighntoraaffighnt?"

 

When he replied, "She'd like a half pint," I replayed their question and understood in retrospect what they had said, "Would you like a pint or a half pint?"

 

After I got used to the accent, I was fine.

 

I would be saying something and my FIL (Texas) would be nodding and smiling. I'd get to the end and he would turn to my future husband, "What she say?"

 

I've got a pretty middle of the road southern English accent, but he just wasn't used to it. My MIL had travelled a lot more and found my accent fine. On the other hand, she once started talking about "being fardy" which I interpreted as "having a wind problem". She was saying "being forty".

 

Laura

Edited June 6, 2010 by Laura Corin

[bairnmama]

In college, I was required to take a computer class with a lab. Of course, the lab portion was "taught" by 2 grad students which would have been fine if their accents hadn't been so thick. By the 2nd week of class they had given up telling the class the instructions for the and wrote them all up on the board instead. Whenever anyone had a question about what to do, they would simply go to the board and point to the correct answer! This communication problem didn't mean that my entire computer class was racist... we still came to class and greeted our instructors nicely. We just couldn't understand what they were saying at all!

[caitlinsmom]

It's not like you said, "I had to speak to another one of those southern idiots today" and then followed it up with a comment stereotyping southerners. It's not your fault that their accent was strong or that you can't hear them as well over the phone. I can't "hear" people very well if I don't have my glasses on. Apparently I have learned how to read lips to compensate for my marching band-induced hearing loss. My dh laughs all the time when I say "Hang on, I can't hear you, let me find my glasses."

 

 

 

:) My dh is a soft spoken mumbler. I have to read his lips when he talks or I can not understand/hear him. I always say " Sorry I am blind right now, let me get my glasses." He finds it very funny too!