What?

Someone should invent a new language for hard of hearing folks - like me. 

Age related hearing loss is more about partial hearing loss.  The top part of the hearing spectrum is lost. This is the part that allows us to differentiate between different words and word sounds. The sibilant part of words - that which is formed with the teeth and tongue, for example. It becomes hard to tell the difference between 't' and 'c' and 'p' and just plain 'e' sounds.

Most of the time when I say; "What?" in a conversation it is not because I didn't 'hear', it's because I didn't understand what was said. I heard perfectly fine but I couldn't interpret what I heard. Sometimes I repeat back to my wife what I thought I heard her say and we get a good laugh. But this isn't something I feel comfortable doing with others during the normal course of my day. So I just rely on; "What?", or "I'm sorry but I didn't understand that." It is difficult not to feel like this is an admission of ignorance or slowness on my part. I believe that people can't help thinking that deaf folks are also a little adel-brained. Or, when accompanied by my grey hair and wrinkles, they may think my mind is going along with my hearing.

But it occurs to me that we (hard of hearing) are like foreigners and that English is no longer our native language. It's not that we lack the vocabulary it's just that we are no longer able to match what we are hearing with the words that we know. So why not develop a language that we can understand which uses sounds we can still hear and differentiate. It may be something that is very close to English but not that close, like Cajun French.

I only had two years of French in college so I don't know that much about language or language theory but I wonder if other languages are as hard for their senior citizens to understand as English is for me.  After all, if everyone could only hear the bottom half of our audio spectrum, wouldn't our language evolve to accommodate.  Maybe we could force everyone who isn't hard of hearing to wear earplugs.

Maybe it's time for me to learn sign language.

 No, not quite yet.