Can someone who is severely deaf talk normally?

I'm severely HOH. My left hearing is going downhill to becoming total deaf as I age. *sighs* Anyway, I was born that way. When I was about 3, I could only say 5 words and that's not normal for any 2 or 3 yrs olds. My mother found out that I'm HOH in both ears. So, starting at age 3, I took speech therapist all the way to the day I graduated from high school. Now and then, I have a hard time saying or pronouncing the words. I remember when I was a kid, my mother was talking to my sister. She asked to get some mayonnaise. My impression was band-aids. So, I asked her why she need some band-aids? She tells me no-no, it's mayonnaise. She has to teach me how to say it. It's the only way I have to learn.
 
signer16 said:
Once you've had extensive training, and learned how to regulate your voice without hearing it, or have a certain level of hearing, it makes sense that your speech would hit a consistent level.
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I was able to use BTE hearing aids and a Comtek FM system with DAI (direct audio input) for 2 out of the 10 years I had severe-profound hearing loss, so this allowed me to hear my voice well enough (since I used an environmental microphone to pick up the sound of my own voice) in order to be able to regulate it.

When I do not have my CIs on, my speech *is* different and I end up pronouncing certain words incorrectly even though I know how they should be pronounced. The volume of my voice isn't affected since I can control that by feeling vibrations in my throat (a suggestion shared by my former ENT).

Whether the quality of a person's speech is impacted by hearing loss or deafness varies from person to person. I know some totally deaf people whose speech sounds "normal" (i.e. like someone who has normal hearing). I also know people with moderate and severe hearing loss where it is evident that they cannot hear well.

Even though I've been able to use my hearing (with hearing aids and a Comtek FM system) until 1997, you can still tell that I don't hear well by the quality of my speech. I don't have a "deaf" voice per se, but pre-CI, one could tell by my nasaly voice and the way I slurred my words that I had some degree of hearing loss.

The earliest time this was evident was when I received my first pair of BTEs for a moderately-severe loss. My audi at the time politely brought the quality of my speech to my attention (see above) which continued until the time I received my first CI.
 
signer16 said:
Um....what? No speech therapy? NO years of trying to get that S, CH, Z, etc. to sound right? I am SURE your hearing status has impacted your speech.QUOTE]


I was referring to Lantana's comment about how our speech deteriorates when we lose our hearing or become deaf. What I meant is that this issue doesnt apply to me cuz I have been deaf since birth so whatever speech skills I learned as a young child remains the same. My level of deafness doesnt impact my current speech skills. However I speak whether it is flawed or not will probably stay the same for the rest of my life.
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jillio said:
OMG, you just brought me back to all the times I wanted to strangle people who told me my son could "hear more than I thought he could" because he had worked for 18 years to develop speech skills! Dumb asses!
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yea, that is what I deal with and still do. I just try to explain to people to the best of my ability so up to those people if they are willing to have an open mind about it or not. Yea, there were times I get frustrated but I just have to tell myself that it is not worth it cuz there will always be people like that.
 
The volume of my voice isn't affected since I can control that by feeling vibrations in my throat
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Isn't that *tries to remember* Tadoma?
And it's probaly a lot easier for you to do stuff like that since you had the advantage of only having a relatively mild loss for a lot of your childhood. I still have problems with modulation and pitch and stuff like that....
 
deafdyke said:
Isn't that *tries to remember* Tadoma?
And it's probaly a lot easier for you to do stuff like that since you had the advantage of only having a relatively mild loss for a lot of your childhood. I still have problems with modulation and pitch and stuff like that....
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DD,

Are your comments directed at me? (Sorry, the quote didn't have a name on it, but I do remember mentioning the fact that I had a mild hearing loss for much of my childhood as well as my ENT telling me about controlling my voice through vibration).

I did have a mild loss for much of my childhood. In fact, it wasn't until my loss became moderately-severe that I experienced more difficulty controlling the volume of my voice. My voice also sounded monotonous because I could no longer hear the inflection in other people's voices.

I consider it a huge blessing to have had only a mild loss for many years -- although my CI audi said that I could have benefitted from HAs even then (HAs and ear surgery were recommended for me at age 3, but due to issues with my parents' health insurance, I had to go without either until age 15 when I received my first pair of BTE hearing aids for a moderately-severe loss).

Controlling the volume of your own voice via vibrations in the throat isn't Tadoma. Tadoma is a method of communication used by the deafblind in which they place their thumb on *another* person's lips and fingers on the throat to feel the vibrations.

Here is what Wikipedia says about Tadoma:

Tadoma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tadoma
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Tadoma is a method of communication used by deafblind people, in which the deafblind person places his thumb on the speaker's lips and his fingers along the jawline. The middle three fingers often fall along the speaker's cheeks with the pinky finger picking up the vibrations of the speaker's throat. It is sometimes referred to as 'tactile lipreading', as the deafblind person feels the movement of the lips, as well as vibrations of the vocal cords, puffing of the cheeks and the warm air produced by nasal sounds such as 'N' and 'M'.

In some cases, especially if the speaker knows sign language, the deaf-blind person may use the Tadoma method with one hand, feeling the speaker's face; and at the same time, the deaf-blind person may use their other hand to feel the speaker sign the same words. In this way, the two methods reinforce each other, giving the deaf-blind person a better chance of understanding what the speaker is trying to communicate. In addition, the Tadoma method can provide the deaf-blind person with a closer connection with speech than they might otherwise have had. This can, in turn, help them to retain speech skills that they developed before going deaf, and in special cases, to learn how to speak brand new words.

The Tadoma method was invented by American teacher Sophie Alcorn and developed at the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts. It is named after the first two children to whom it was taught: Winthrop "Tad" Chapman and Oma Simpson. It was hoped that the students would learn to speak by trying to reproduce what they felt on the speaker's face and throat while touching their own face.

It is a difficult method to learn and use, and is rarely used nowadays. However, a small number of deafblind people successfully use Tadoma in everyday communication.
 
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This is the first time I have opened this thread, and I didnt read any posts to it. To answer the original post, Yes, someone that is profoundly deaf, can talk "normally". My daughter does, she will try to short cut proper speech, but when she speaks, she is very easy to understand.
 
My Great Aunt who died a few years ago at the age of 80 went Deaf over time. I only ever knew her as being HOH or Deaf. I will have to ask my Aunt, her daughter, if she was always HOH or not. She had the old style HA that had the sound receiver that hung around the neck. It got to where you had to speak in her chest for her to hear you. Then she would still wear it but the functionality of it was gone. She had a TTY and flashing lights for the phone and door. The only change to her speech that I noticed over time was words that ended in “Y” tended to be higher pitched and louder and would curl at the end as if she was asking a question. “I” in the middle of words also were higher pitched and louder. Other than that her speech remained relatively normal. She got pretty good at reading lips and she never really spoke too loud. She was too old to learn ASL though by the time it got to that point. You would have never said that to her though. She would have learned it just to spite you. She was an amazing woman!!
 
I had good hearing and spoke perfectly normal if not extremely articulate until I lost my hearing in nearly an instant. Afterward I was instantly worried if I sounded "weird" people reassured me for a time that I spoke fine, but now after few years of being deaf I'm told I don't pronounce some consonents very well and cut out some of words. I hear some of my voice with my HA's, but obviously never how I use to could. So now that I speak a little differently and pretty monotone...hehe...I don't care anymore and now I never ask somebody if Im speaking ok......I think probably because Im used to and am much more accepting of me now than before.
 
When I lost my hearing, I also spoke in a monotone. My voice also had a nasaly quality to it. When I received my first pair of HAs for a moderately-severe loss, the sound quality of my voice was politely brought to my attention by my audi who said that it wasn't unusual for people who had losses similar to or worse than mine.

Ever since I received bilateral CIs, I can regulate my voice and have more intonation. As one of my friend's told me, I have more of a "lilt" in my voice -- something that hasn't been evident for many, many years.
 
serverly deaf

momentary said:
Hi ,I am in school and talking with my friends and they say that a deaf person cant talk normally,but I say they can if they became deaf when adult. Am I right or are my friends right ? Thankyou!!!!
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hi - i am severly deaf since childhood but can speak and hear quite well thaks to the advance techno. They are very few who can speak but luckly enough i can. So ur rite

James
 
I am profoundly deaf and I can speak very well and normally. Sometimes a loud talker :lol:
 
I am profoundly deaf, and I have been told that my speech compares to that of a non-deaf, which puts me in "no-man's land".
 
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I'm severe-to-profoundly deaf, since birth. I've had speech therapy for 12 years, and many hearing people tell me that I sound like a hearing person and they're usually surprised when I tell them I'm deaf.

Even some deaf people I've met think I'm just HoH and not actually born deaf, due to my ability to speak well.
 
I think a general concensus of "normal" would be speak clear enough, depending on the phoenetics of the region of world located, as to where it sounds there is no type of apparent impairment.

I often draw back from my own experience of "normal hearing/speech" and my own personal interpretation of this, whether same as anyone else, or even politically correct for that matter.

I have had wonderful experiences since deaf and some I wouldn't trade for anything. Even being post lingual deafened, people at first seem to be hesitant, fearfull, or even deduct a few IQ points from me preliminarily. It has brought about, or compelled, a point of view if humanity that I never would have had. I am humbled with this experience, and consider my point of view a personal treasure which theorectically not many people have gained. I think there are such wonderful individuals I have got to know from AD- I am so thankfull and greatful of everyone who I have the privilege of interacting with here.
 
hohDougRN said:
I think a general concensus of "normal" would be speak clear enough, depending on the phoenetics of the region of world located, as to where it sounds there is no type of apparent impairment.

I often draw back from my own experience of "normal hearing/speech" and my own personal interpretation of this, whether same as anyone else, or even politically correct for that matter.

I have had wonderful experiences since deaf and some I wouldn't trade for anything. Even being post lingual deafened, people at first seem to be hesitant, fearfull, or even deduct a few IQ points from me preliminarily. It has brought about, or compelled, a point of view if humanity that I never would have had. I am humbled with this experience, and consider my point of view a personal treasure which theorectically not many people have gained. I think there are such wonderful individuals I have got to know from AD- I am so thankfull and greatful of everyone who I have the privilege of interacting with here.
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Despite being born with a severe to prfound bilateral loss, I was told that my tone of voice is consistent during conversations like hearing people's. I wonder how the hell I learned that when I can hear shit? Weird.
 
I thought a bit more and asked my Mom and Dad to tell me more my voice. They tell me that I do not mis to many sound speaking, but I do talk a little more different than 9 yrs ago. :D
 
I am hearing sometimes people say my voice is too soft and to turn up the volume :roll: Those people just haven't seen me watch a NE Patriot game :giggle:
 
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