There is absolutely no denying that my cat’s hearing is vastly superior to mine; as a matter of fact, she can hear a mouse fart and I can’t. BUT in spite of my wife’s perfidious insinuations, I am not as deaf as a doorknob.
Granted, my hearing is not as acute as when I was in my prime, but I still hear perfectly well as long as you articulate, use the correct term, put the stress on the correct syllable (tonic accent) and remain at a hearing distance.
Women I have noticed (and I have known a few biblically) like to communicate from another room, another floor or preferably from a closet.
Even worse, they are often convinced that they already talked to you about something that was absolutely never mentioned before.
“The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” George Bernard Shaw
Mister Shaw said this a long time before I said it.
One of our problems is that we are both foreign-born and that we are trying to communicate in a language that is not inherently ours.
I hail from a French background and she comes from a Slavic country where they speak a language totally devoid of articles.
And this can cause significant problems. “Grandes problemas” as Castro would say.
The absence of an article can make a sentence sound peculiar or even totally incomprehensible to an English speaker.
Without proper grammar, it becomes extremely difficult to communicate properly.
Bad punctuation can have the same effect.
Let’s eat grandma! and Let’s eat, grandma! have quite a different meaning and could significantly perturb a relationship.
Talking about eating grandma is not always something that goes down well. Especially if it is your own grandmother.
The tonic accent (putting the emphasis on a syllable) is also extremely important and trips many foreigners.
In English the stress is usually on the first syllable. In Spanish it is often on the second syllable and In French sometimes there is no emphasis on any syllable.
For instance take the word “comedy”:
In English, the stress is on comedy
In Spanish, comedia (the stress is on me)
In French, comédie (no stress on any syllable).
Fortunately, there is a good way to settle arguments.
You can test your diction with Apple’s Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface); she is the impartial, ultimate arbiter.
If lovely Siri doesn’t understand your utterings, don’t blame anybody but yourself; there is obviously something flawed about your speech.
So before “the pot calling the kettle black”, talk to Siri (or any computer for that matter), and when proven speech-deficient, crawl back to me.
I might accept your apologies.
Alain
A husband and wife went to the doctor. [The husband is hard of hearing]
The doctor says to the wife, “You’ve got to do 3 things to keep your husband well.”
“1st you got to keep everything real clean and smooth. You got to iron everything.”
“2nd you got to fix him fresh meals every day from scratch. No left overs, no fast or frozen foods.”
“3rd you got to give him more lovin.”
They get home and the husband asks, “Well what did the doctor say?”
The wife looks at him and responds, “You’re going to die.”