Accents are very difficult for most people with hearing loss to understand. Also, for those with typical hearing loss, which shows up on a downward sloping audiogram, the higher consonant sounds are the most difficult to hear. Those are the sounds that leave us first. Vowels give power to speech, so we tend to hear vowels fairly well. Sounds like sh, th, pf, s, etc. slowly disappear from our hearing range, and make it difficult for us to understand conversation. (Especially in noisy places.)

@jakedduck1

As @julieo4 stated, accents are definitely more difficult to understand. Just be sure to tell the person it’s your problem, not their accent, as some people seem to be embarrassed by their accents.
What she said about vowels and consonants are so important.
Losing high frequencies is where your understanding speech starts to deteriorate.

I try not to use the word “hear” when asking people to repeat and use “sorry, I didn’t understand what you said”. I heard the words but couldn’t understand what the words were. It’s like listening to a foreign language. Might be a picky strategy but too many people shout which doesn’t help. Also, repeat what you think you heard so the speaker doesn’t have to repeat the entire conversation. For instance, someone says they are going to the Riviera for vacation and you didn’t hear the word Riviera. You say…you’re going where on vacation? Avoids frustration on both ends.

And I suggest you use captions on tv…you will get use to them…why stress out about that. Alexa is impossible for me as I need to see peoples faces and lips. Get that exam asap cuz it’s not going to get any better and probably will get worse.

When you do get hearing aids, there are so many people here who can help you every step of the way with absolutely anything and so many of us didn’t have that support ….or technology….years and
years ago. But you know that and we are so fortunate to have someone like Julie as our moderator.

FL Mary