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Well, drive through speakers are also notoriously bad. 😅 But yeah fully agree. When I talk to other people in my 2nd language, I often understand them perfectly well in person but the same person talking about the same thing is hard to understand for me over the phone. If I watch something on TV and I can’t see their face, I feel compelled to turn up the volume way higher than I would for English. Language is harder than we think, but our brains are really good at using all information at its disposal and making it feel deceptively easy.

It makes sense. Your brain uses all kinds of cues even if you don’t realize it. That includes things like smiles and even some degree of “lip reading”. If you can’t see someone’s mouth moving, you lose some cues and your brain has fewer signals to rely on when interpreting speech.

That said, if you can take a phone call, you can understand someone through a mask. It’s not an impenetrable barrier for communication.

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What a post to kick off the reddit exodus