"Oh, you speak so well!" and other annoying comments

kimeran said:
Nowadays I can't be bothered to 'listen' to rude people any more.

Losing some of my hearing certainly filtered out who my REAL friends were. At least now I know that my friends ARE my friends. It's quality rather than quantity.

If people can't be bothered to repeat something for me, I just say ok and walk away. It was them who closed the conversation.

And I've felt alot better since :mrgreen:

If someone can't show me a bit of reciprocal courtesy - as I always try to treat everyone with respect and courtesy - then they are a chore LOL!
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Wow! That really spells it out. It is such a damed shame that ability to produce intelligible speech is associated, in so many people's minds, with intellligence and worth. ARRGG!:rl:
 
BearBeauty said:
When people find out you're deaf, they're trying to be consideriate and ask if you can lipread or speak because they want to find out what you can do. I can understand people feeling insulted by it. but remember that most hearing people have never met a deaf person in their lives.. so they're not sure how to behave around a deaf person. It's not a matter of insulting the deaf, it's a matter of learning about them.
I get the lipreading and speaking thing all the time. Since I can lipread, I tend to use it with people unless I do not understand them. But All we can do as deaf people is educate those who don't understand.
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You are spot on with that one - I too lipread and talk okay minus the prounouciation of a couple of letters. People do not understand what it must be like no matter the lightness or severity of deafness. People look at us as normal, but when they have that 'look' maybe then they will know something is not right. I found that most people can see am deaf when they see am watching their lips and not their face or eyes. :)
 
:pissed: I'm hearing and can totally understand why those comments are so offensive. Whenever I can, I let hearing people know why those comments are offensive.
 
shel90 said:
Yep, I get those comments although recently it hasn't been as annoying as before. Only thing I hate about it is that it gives hearing people the false impression that I can hear better than I really do so they would start speaking while turned away or speak too fast. I just hate it when they continue to do it after reminding them a few times. That's when my frustration level goes up a few notches.


Growing up, I had so many teachers and aduts tell me that because I speak so well, I must be smart as if there was a correlation between my intelligence and speaking skills. That lead me to believe for an extremely long time that if I didn't have perfect speech, I am not as smart as they claimed. That caused my paranoia about having perfect speech. It took therapy to get over it and realize that one had nothing to do with the other. That I REALLLY DID NOT appreciate!! :pissed:
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It was probably intended as a compliment, but is was a callous one, because it was given without much thought to its implications. As a hearing person, that's something for me to learn from all these things... keep the value judgements to myself, unless there's no way to misunderstand it.
 
kmjbmama said:
UGH!! I sure know how it feels.

I still get that comment when people find out I am deaf after we have been talking for a while. Who ever said deaf people cannot speak or lipread or any of that??? I love to tell them that my voice isn't broken... just my ears. LOL It's like telling people who are in a wheelchair "Wow, you can drive a car!?" Well, duh! Some people can, some people can't... Big deal.

It is also really funny because people tend to think my husband is deaf and when he starts speaking to them and they are so impressed and tell him how wonderful his speech is and he just says "I know, I have been hearing my whole life and I'm so amazed at how well I can speak. YAY me!!" LOL
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That's FUNNY! :rofl:
 
I get those comments too, what even annoy me more about people get negative thought about a deaf pregnant woman thinking her baby will be born deaf. So I tell them if my child born deaf or hearing,, I would love my child no matter what.... being deaf is not a curse. So speaking and reading lips is just a form of commuications. But I would perfer asl anyway. :) Hearing people need to be more educated on dear awarness and respecting their feelings for who they are. :)
 
jillio said:
Wow! That really spells it out. It is such a damed shame that ability to produce intelligible speech is associated, in so many people's minds, with intellligence and worth. ARRGG!:rl:
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Shall we start to associate inability to sign with stupidity? If they know, they would object to it big time.
 
Lmao I've had people say that too 'Wow I can't even tell you have a hearing loss, etc'. I may miss what people say sometimes, but it's not a LOSS really, I see it as an advantage, I get to be a part of the 'hearing' world & the 'deaf' world, i've met so many great people from both sides, so i'm grateful for who I am. =P
 
I must be stupid

My speech is bad so some people think I am stupid.The thing I do not understand is that some people that have real good speech are stupid.
 
oakbluffs said:
Another thing I hate is when someone asks "Do you understand whay I just said?" I replied yes and he goes "What did I say?"
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Reply back with: "You said, Do you understand what I just said?"

That ought to shut them up.

I've been asked: "How did you learn to lipread". I don't really have an answer to that except I've been lipreading since I was little...

 
The most annoying thing is having the hearing authority like public schools or private schools want us to use oral instead of ASL. It is the same us natives( Indians) that the government take away our culture of language, clothing and traditional dances just to be like the white people. Why are hearing people so obsess on having us speak. Don't hearing people know that it is hard to lipread and use oral (perfect speech). It just make me get very angry, that I don't like myself to get upset over it. I guess we will have to teach them that they can not put us through like that. Did you know that All My Children (soap opera) start having the obsess to have a deaf child to become a hearing person again by hoping to fix him up. Hearing people think it is a curse, which it is not. That I don't get it.
 
Bebonang said:
The most annoying thing is having the hearing authority like public schools or private schools want us to use oral instead of ASL. It is the same us natives( Indians) that the government take away our culture of language, clothing and traditional dances just to be like the white people. Why are hearing people so obsess on having us speak. Don't hearing people know that it is hard to lipread and use oral (perfect speech). It just make me get very angry, that I don't like myself to get upset over it. I guess we will have to teach them that they can not put us through like that. Did you know that All My Children (soap opera) start having the obsess to have a deaf child to become a hearing person again by hoping to fix him up. Hearing people think it is a curse, which it is not. That I don't get it.
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There are lots of similarities between what the Europeans did tothe Indian cultures and what the hearing have done to the deaf. It all goes back to ethnocentrism. I personally find such views to benothing more than arrogant ignorance.
 
I still think Bionic Woman should have kept the deaf character...... but thats a whole new can of worms....
 
Kimeran said:
My Number One Annoying Thing:

Person says something to you, you don't know what, but you heard them mumble something. So you ask them to repeat, and they say:

"Oh nothing" or "It doesn't matter"
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Dixie said:
I mean shit if they knew the person was fully hearing - they would have nicely repeated it, but when it comes to someone that is hoh or deaf they make it out like it is a chore to repeat something they have said.
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I kind of hate to say this and ruin the rant, but they do that to other hearing people, too. I often ask people to repeat themselves because their speech will come out as unintelligible blurbs. Then they say, "oh, nevermind," and I have to fight the urge to smack them upside the head and say, "I really do want to know everything you say to me!" Even my family does this. It's really quite irritating whether you're Deaf, HOH, or hearing.
 
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But its the fact that the person KNOWS you are deaf or HOH and they act like repeating something to us took away a precious 5-10 seconds out of their time. For someone thats hearing and simply does not listen well - I can understand the frustration.

But lets flip the table around for a moment and think - perhaps the person speaking to us has a slight speech impediment and often what they say comes out unintelligible and because they are asked to repeat themselves numerous times a day perhaps when it came to us they were frustrated and chose to not share the information with us anyway.
 
Bebonang said:
The most annoying thing is having the hearing authority like public schools or private schools want us to use oral instead of ASL. It is the same us natives( Indians) that the government take away our culture of language, clothing and traditional dances just to be like the white people. Why are hearing people so obsess on having us speak. Don't hearing people know that it is hard to lipread and use oral (perfect speech). It just make me get very angry, that I don't like myself to get upset over it. I guess we will have to teach them that they can not put us through like that. Did you know that All My Children (soap opera) start having the obsess to have a deaf child to become a hearing person again by hoping to fix him up. Hearing people think it is a curse, which it is not. That I don't get it.
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I am with you. The Native Americans or first Nations should keep their traditions as it is interesting to see many different cultures. Who want a cookie cutter culture???
 
Bebonang said:
The most annoying thing is having the hearing authority like public schools or private schools want us to use oral instead of ASL. It is the same us natives( Indians) that the government take away our culture of language, clothing and traditional dances just to be like the white people. Why are hearing people so obsess on having us speak. Don't hearing people know that it is hard to lipread and use oral (perfect speech). It just make me get very angry, that I don't like myself to get upset over it. I guess we will have to teach them that they can not put us through like that. Did you know that All My Children (soap opera) start having the obsess to have a deaf child to become a hearing person again by hoping to fix him up. Hearing people think it is a curse, which it is not. That I don't get it.
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You know I completly agree with you. What gets me is when I see some deaf people complaining about having to write stuff down to communicate and imply that the rest of the population should cater to their specific means of communication. You can't have it both ways. If I were deaf I would accept the fact that there are going to be situations where communication will be an issue and make adjustments accordingly. Having the ability to speak and write would be helpful towards that end. As much as it would be optimal, you will never get to a point where the entire hearing population will know how to sign in all of the means that are currently available. It's not a realistic expectation. I'm not saying you have that expectation and it's a general comment.

And don't get me started on the whole Native American issue. It always cracks me up when white people (of which I am one) talk about allowing others into our country. I have to remind them that this country belonged to the Native Americans and we were the outsiders. That could be a thread by itself. Sorry for digressing.
 
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