I can't understand what they are saying

[Ciaphas]

Personally I only have trouble with exceptionally strong accents and even then that tends to be limited to those which I've had little exposure to.

[Baron von Lotsov]

Oh by the way, one reason I could not hear the bloke i linked to was because my internet is playing up and unbeknown to me the Youtube quality setting had flicked down from HD to some low value because of my line speed. When trying to play it again at HD it made quit a bit of difference. I believe this is also the reason why I have trouble with mobile calls and why even today i refuse to use them. The mobile skank operators seems to palm the high-paying customer off with data-rates so low that it butcher the sound quality. I can cope with poor quality sound and good speech, or good quality sound and bad speech, but not both.



My real bone of contention though is when speech is deliberately played with on TV to make it sound more trendy or more cool or more with it. One really bitch thing is the nonchalant fading out at the end of a sentence with a long technical term in it. It's kind of got the subtext of "of course you know what I'm talking about, so I don't even need to bother finishing my sentence properly." Think Radio 4 academic type and you'll have it about right for that one.

[Barry]

In the sixties, when pop music became , well, popular, my Mother used to go on about "not being able to hear the words".

I never really got the importance of this when the Beatles were shouting "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah". It was the melody which was king in those days - and it was played so loud that we are now needing at least one, if not 2 hearing aids, which is fine, because they balance up the spectacles. We need the spectacles because we carried on doing things we were told would damage our eyesight, I suppose.   :shock:

[Churchill]

Some think build up of earwax is the problem which it can be to a degree for some people, however when I was tested they told me something I did not know the ears only funnel the sound to receptors in the brain they pick up the sound

[Borchester]

I have damaged hearing exposed to too much noise and  head injuries over the years plus of course age does not help, struggled for a long time with some TV programmes and films when people mumble or talk too fast gave up with some American films.



Old black and white films when people spoke clearly and not as fast as they do now not a problem, it was impossible for me to keep up with conversations with family and friends any background noise and I struggled to keep up and sometimes if the background noise was very loud not even possible



Two years ago I finally had to admit defeat and did something about it I had my hearing tested, issued with two hearing aids took a little time to get used to them, I normally only wear one but now I can hear much better they work you forget you are wearing them.



If eligible earing test is free, can be done at your local NHS ENT Department or Boots, Specsavers., you can even do a quick test on line

I am in a similar boat. I am as deaf as a post and addicted to US soaps. So while I am ok with Chris O'Dowd in Get Shorty I am a bit stuck with non Irish actors. Fortunately Subscene has subtitles for most everything I want to watch.



I have two hearing aids that I rarely use. I can get through most conversations by politely nodding my head and telling the grandchildren to remember that I am not made of money, so they should get whatever they want as cheaply as possible and to send me the bill.



I like to put the boot into the NHS. Why they took the nurses out of black stockings and dressed them like counter hands at Greggs I will never know. It certainly did little for patient moral. But be that as it may be it does seem to have taken on board the idea that prevention is better than cure with the result that not only do I get free hearing aids, they also chuck in free batteries.



I hate socialism, except of course when it is making my soft life even softer.

[Churchill]

So do I as I have a few issues hearing if there's a lot of background noise. Don't use them for live stuff though as the time lag irritates me!

I have damaged hearing exposed to too much noise and  head injuries over the years plus of course age does not help, struggled for a long time with some TV programmes and films when people mumble or talk too fast gave up with some American films.



Old black and white films when people spoke clearly and not as fast as they do now not a problem, it was impossible for me to keep up with conversations with family and friends any background noise and I struggled to keep up and sometimes if the background noise was very loud not even possible



Two years ago I finally had to admit defeat and did something about it I had my hearing tested, issued with two hearing aids took a little time to get used to them, I normally only wear one but now I can hear much better they work you forget you are wearing them.



If eligible earing test is free, can be done at your local NHS ENT Department or Boots, Specsavers., you can even do a quick test on line

[Baron von Lotsov]

That's because the guy has been brainwashed and thinks he is highly educated and uses ridiculous phrases like "multiple cascading benefits" to try to bamboozle us. I've heard of dumbing down, but this is dumbing up. Did anyone actually watch it all, well done if they got through that esoteric marathon.

Well technically (as I put my von Professor hat on) he is also dumbing us down.  "multiple cascading benefits" is a variant on management consultant-speak. He's probably leveraging human resources and investing in modern infrastructure developments as well. People can go on for hours telling you these things!



I think the actual hearing of these of terms is improved with practice, so if you have management consultant students then you only have to hear half the phrase to click what he says because that phrase is used constantly by their kind.



Another problem though is the sound quality itself. For some reason, leading technology universities like Stanford and MIT do not have a bloody clue about acoustics of lecture theatres and sound recording techniques. Actually the leader in the technology side of sound tends to be the BBC, where their studio sound is excellent. It's the universities that appear the worst offenders. Any amateur on Youtube will beat them hands down.

[Scott777]

That's because the guy has been brainwashed and thinks he is highly educated and uses ridiculous phrases like "multiple cascading benefits" to try to bamboozle us. I've heard of dumbing down, but this is dumbing up. Did anyone actually watch it all, well done if they got through that esoteric marathon.

I did watch it all, and concluded it's a pure propaganda piece, endorsing Greta Thunderbird and the CO2 causes global warming thing.

[Barry]

I understand what they are saying but  I don't know what they mean .

That's because the guy has been brainwashed and thinks he is highly educated and uses ridiculous phrases like "multiple cascading benefits" to try to bamboozle us. I've heard of dumbing down, but this is dumbing up. Did anyone actually watch it all, well done if they got through that esoteric marathon.

[papasmurf]

I understand what they are saying but  I don't know what they mean .

I have that problem with politicians.

[papasmurf]

The other problem is background music making it difficult to hear what people are saying.

[Streetwalker]

I understand what they are saying but  I don't know what they mean .

[Scott777]

You may well find it clear if you are used to it, but I find the modern tongue difficult to understand because of the way pronunciations have changed. The people I mostly communicate with tend to have good English and have learnt to speak properly. Around here though, like in shops and so on, the modern manner of communication is very difficult to understand. People accent things. They talk too fast and miss syllables. It is as if people are in a rush all the time. They also don't plan what they are going to say in their heads very well, so it does not form comprehensible logical sentences. I'm not trying to put myself across as some ace communication myself, but I do notice age makes a  lot of difference. People in their 20 are especially cryptic. I can catch about one word in three. It depends on conditions of course, so with background noise, echo when someone does a speech in a hall or the speech compression and distortion of a mobile phone, it can tip the balance between intelligible and gibber.

Fair enough.  I have a fascination with accents and speech and listen carefully to lots of TV and people in the street.  I also moved around a lot in my life, so perhaps I'm very familiar.  I worry more about my eyes these days.

[Baron von Lotsov]

I don't know what bits you refer to, but the accent is Aussia.  OK, found it, it sounds quite clear to me.  Is this interviewer related to Jeremy Kunt?  You should be careful listening to anything educational from the BBC propaganda machine.

You may well find it clear if you are used to it, but I find the modern tongue difficult to understand because of the way pronunciations have changed. The people I mostly communicate with tend to have good English and have learnt to speak properly. Around here though, like in shops and so on, the modern manner of communication is very difficult to understand. People accent things. They talk too fast and miss syllables. It is as if people are in a rush all the time. They also don't plan what they are going to say in their heads very well, so it does not form comprehensible logical sentences. I'm not trying to put myself across as some ace communication myself, but I do notice age makes a  lot of difference. People in their 20 are especially cryptic. I can catch about one word in three. It depends on conditions of course, so with background noise, echo when someone does a speech in a hall or the speech compression and distortion of a mobile phone, it can tip the balance between intelligible and gibber.

[Scott777]

I've been listening to quite a few interviews and broadcasts in general, and I'm finding it harder and harder to decode modern speech. If I listen to a BBC programme of the 1950s or 1970s, the person on the box generally manages to pronounce his words properly.



I was just trying to listen to an interview on the BBC's Click programme, which is like a Tomorrow's World type programme on technology. The one being interviewed was a film maker, and the guy sat there for half an hour mumbling on, but even when playing bits of the clip 3-4 times, the word I'm trying to decode just comes across as totally inaudible. Well you can hear a noise but it does not resemble a word in my head. Then to make matters worse, the BBC man doing the interviewing was trying to be expressive (or whatever the word is for it is at the BBC training session) where the expressive pronunciation masks the intelligibility of the word. When he had to say the words "antonymous cars" it sounded more like "auto ominous cars"! Perhaps that was a Freudian slip, but hey, these guys are on a salary and you guys pay for it. What do you say?

I don't know what bits you refer to, but the accent is Aussia.  OK, found it, it sounds quite clear to me.  Is this interviewer related to Jeremy Kunt?  You should be careful listening to anything educational from the BBC propaganda machine.