March 30, 2005
Mumbles

Epidemic.  Not to overstate the situation but according to my ears we’re experiencing a national tragedy.  There’s simply no refuting the fact over the past decade citizens of our fair land have made a collective decision to forego decent diction in favor of mumbling. 

This is especially true in my own family circle where mumbling has become a malady affecting all members of Clan Maynard.  The daughters, their husbands and children speak so indistinctly one is forced to ask the most basic of declaratives be repeated.  Such a request is then greeted with a rolling of eyes followed by my own flesh and blood shouting a repeat of what they had just garbled. Well excuse me, it’s not like I’m hard of hearing.  Instead of becoming aggravated why not just enunciate clearly on the first try to verbally communicate. 

Nowhere is this indecipherable mush-mouthing more prevalent than at home.  When my wife and I first set up housekeeping, she spoke in a clear and distinct manner most easily understood. This is no longer true. Over the past few years her speaking voice has deteriorated into the same barely audible, hurried gasping of words favored by her daughters.   

Just last week, in the middle of dinner, this person who promised to “love and honor as long as we both be wed” expressed the opinion that while grammarians may feel “the” is the most frequently used word in the English language it certainly wasn’t true at our abode where the word she most often heard escaping her husband’s lips was  “Huh?” 

This is an exaggeration of the first magnitude.  I go out of my way to intersperse conversational interrogatives with, “Excuse me?” “I’m sorry?” “You were saying?” and after the second try, “What?”  “Huh” is only used approximately twenty per cent of the time like maybe once every ten or twenty seconds. 

Speaking of my wife, this is an individual absolutely refusing to take her share of the blame for the lack of volume and clear diction in our home, car or hiking the Serpents Trail.  Just because Jan has a degree in Speech Pathology and spent twenty or so years working as a language therapist and audiologist, she seems to think her knowledge exceeds mine on the subject of mumbling in America. 

Not that she’s convinced I’m traveling a road leading straight to lip-reading.  While the opinion has been expressed about years of “way too loud” stereo speakers plus age taking a toll on the tympanic membrane, Jan also points the finger of blame my direction when it comes to “selective” hearing. This is so much baloney.  Her claim of being able to silently mouth the words, “Do you wish wine with dinner?” provoking an instant reply, “Either a cab or a merlot” from way out in the garage while shouting in my ear, “Please unload the dishwasher,” earns a reply of “Huh? is without merit. 

Then we have the matter of her continually turning down the volume on the stereo, TV or radio while worrying out loud how the sound level could interrupt the neighbors sleep.  At the listening level she seems to prefer in electronic equipment, we might as well have purchased a less expensive model, one without sound.