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The last place I taught before I retired, the cleaning crew were all Korean. I would leave them messages on the whiteboards, written in Korean -- things that I thought I knew well, and Korean is simple because all spelling is phonetic. Alas, my pronunciation is not. The longer I got from my time in Korea, the worse my accent became, and now it's nearly a joke. They still understood what I was trying to say, of course, and they appreciated that I was making the effort. But still, it is embarrassing. That was eight years ago, and now I'm certainly worse. It doesn't bear thinking about.
As far as closed captioning, I can hear and understand Brit and Aussie speech, though not always the slang. I'm fine with Indian versions of English, too, and to people who are speaking English with a heavy accent. To my wife, they all may as well be speaking Cantonese or Aramaic. I have no idea why she's lost so much of her hearing; neither of us made a habit of listening to really loud things, and in fact I've probably heard more really loud things in my life than she has. She has never fired a rifle, and I've done that thousands of times. And thrown live grenades. It's probably genetic, though it sucks.
On the bright side, my wife and I went to Pearce's Farm Stand for the end of the season sales (bargain bags were the best -- five pounds of vegetables for $2). While there, we encountered a lady of middle years who spoke precise English with a noticeable German accent. So I asked her, in German, if I was correct and she was from Germany. It took thirty seconds to speak reasonably well in German again, though I had to confess that it had been some years (about forty) since the last time I had. I guess I haven't lost everything, but if my hearing was only as good as my wife's I probably wouldn't even have made the attempt.
It's not nice getting old. But consider the alternative, and I'm in good shape -- upright and taking nourishment. And I know that in past days I was able to speak, read, and write a whole lot of languages and didn't need subtitles or closed captioning at all. To use the Billy Joel line: "then I wore a younger man's clothes". Yes, "Piano Man".
My father was a piano man. He'd play requests. He'd make up a piano line for anything and it would sound good. He thought I'd be a concert pianist someday. It was his dream, not mine. I knew my limits better than he did. For his high school graduation, he played "Rhapsody in Blue" on piano only, and the audience was crying at the end. And then he went into the Navy. Christ, and we're going to do it all over again.
As far as closed captioning, I can hear and understand Brit and Aussie speech, though not always the slang. I'm fine with Indian versions of English, too, and to people who are speaking English with a heavy accent. To my wife, they all may as well be speaking Cantonese or Aramaic. I have no idea why she's lost so much of her hearing; neither of us made a habit of listening to really loud things, and in fact I've probably heard more really loud things in my life than she has. She has never fired a rifle, and I've done that thousands of times. And thrown live grenades. It's probably genetic, though it sucks.
On the bright side, my wife and I went to Pearce's Farm Stand for the end of the season sales (bargain bags were the best -- five pounds of vegetables for $2). While there, we encountered a lady of middle years who spoke precise English with a noticeable German accent. So I asked her, in German, if I was correct and she was from Germany. It took thirty seconds to speak reasonably well in German again, though I had to confess that it had been some years (about forty) since the last time I had. I guess I haven't lost everything, but if my hearing was only as good as my wife's I probably wouldn't even have made the attempt.
It's not nice getting old. But consider the alternative, and I'm in good shape -- upright and taking nourishment. And I know that in past days I was able to speak, read, and write a whole lot of languages and didn't need subtitles or closed captioning at all. To use the Billy Joel line: "then I wore a younger man's clothes". Yes, "Piano Man".
My father was a piano man. He'd play requests. He'd make up a piano line for anything and it would sound good. He thought I'd be a concert pianist someday. It was his dream, not mine. I knew my limits better than he did. For his high school graduation, he played "Rhapsody in Blue" on piano only, and the audience was crying at the end. And then he went into the Navy. Christ, and we're going to do it all over again.
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