Is there a middle ground?

[te-kun]

But by reading lips, even if 1/3 you can't distinguish perfectly what it is you still can narrow down to a smaller range of possibilities. That associated with context I think would be enough for a good undertandment. Not that I'm saying that it is easy. But people read lips in Portuguese and in English and I think both languages to be harder to read lips than Japanese.

[Shades of Grey]

But by reading lips, even if 1/3 you can't distinguish perfectly what it is you still can narrow down to a smaller range of possibilities. That associated with context I think would be enough for a good undertandment. Not that I'm saying that it is easy. But people read lips in Portuguese and in English and I think both languages to be harder to read lips than Japanese.

I said that 1/3 was understandable, that makes 2/3 (well over half) the conversation unintelligible or, indeed, misleading. Using situational context, a lipreader can understand the meaning of some things, but understanding a conversation with visual lip reading alone is pretty near impossible if its anything complex.



This video shows someone saying utter nonsense that could credibly be what Mitt Romney was saying if you only read his lips. You know its gibberish because the statements are utter nonsense, but the mouth shapes made could reasonably make those words. When more than half of a conversation becomes nonsensical like that, it really makes lip reading futile in a lot of situations. Lip reading is also mentally taxing since you must carefully watch and interpret the speaker's every actions at all times.

Most people that regularly use lip reading do so as an aid for their impaired or damaged hearing. Totally deaf people usually prefer other, more reliable and less intensive means of understanding speech, such as an interpreter.

A lot of people assume (from fiction probably) that lip reading is almost like actually hearing. It very much isn't. Try taking a video of someone speaking in language you are familiar with. Don't listen to the audio before hand, and mute the video. Then try and understand whats being said. I have, and its a nightmare.

[Yukimi]

What I was trying to say is that perhaps lip reading may be slightly easier In Japanese than for example in English (not sure, just discussing the possibility).

Also, of course if someone untrained in lip reading mutes a video tey won't understand anything or almost noting.

[te-kun]

What Yukimi said.

Also

I said that 1/3 was understandable, that makes 2/3 (well over half) the conversation unintelligible or, indeed, misleading. Using situational context, a lipreader can understand the meaning of some things, but understanding a conversation with visual lip reading alone is pretty near impossible if its anything complex.



This video shows someone saying utter nonsense that could credibly be what Mitt Romney was saying if you only read his lips. You know its gibberish because the statements are utter nonsense, but the mouth shapes made could reasonably make those words. When more than half of a conversation becomes nonsensical like that, it really makes lip reading futile in a lot of situations.

Gladly people don't talk gibberish so you can have some idea on the context.

Lip reading is also mentally taxing since you must carefully watch and interpret the speaker's every actions at all times.

Most people that regularly use lip reading do so as an aid for their impaired or damaged hearing. Totally deaf people usually prefer other, more reliable and less intensive means of understanding speech, such as an interpreter.

A lot of people assume (from fiction probably) that lip reading is almost like actually hearing. It very much isn't. Try taking a video of someone speaking in language you are familiar with. Don't listen to the audio before hand, and mute the video. Then try and understand whats being said. I have, and its a nightmare.

I never said that it was easy or that it can make a 100%. But it sure is helpfull and I think someone Like Shizune who is always trying to be the best would know it. Not that I'm saying that she could live only with that and that she should dump Misha. I love Misha but lip reading would be an aid for Shizune.

Maybe during her story there might be a day when Misha can't come (sick/have personal/family issues) and Shizune would be forced to use lip reading, where the problems you mentioned could be brought up or she could get something that you were saying to another character by lip reading.

[Shades of Grey]

I apologize if I sounded stand off-ish. My intention was simply to inform.

I used to think that lip reading, even if it was imperfect, might be a viable means of communication or understanding a conversation (I assumed this mostly after a batman episode I saw as a child, where he used lip reading read through a telescope to gather clues). When I looked into the matter and began to actually think about the subject, however, I was surprised by how little can actually be understood by lip reading. As someone who has tried learning foreign languages before, i am familiar with the feeling of only understanding part of a conversation, and thats the reason I stressed the 2/3 word loss rate. I found that if I did not understand more than half the sentence (or more, depending) I usually lost any sense of what was being said. For example:

"Would you like to have some toast for breakfast."

"Would --- like to ---- some ----- for breakfast." 2/3 word comprehension

"---- ----- like --- some ---- ---- breakfast." 1/3 word comprehension

"Wool glue like who calf some roast roar breakfast" 1/3 word comprehension with blanked words replaced with words requiring the same or similar mouth movement.

I know that my earlier examples were imperfect, but they were intended to illustrate why information is lost if you only examine the outward face movements. For example, "ma ma" and "ba ba" both cause you to move your mouth in the same way. This is also true for "Would" and "Wool" in the above sentence. This is because various actions with the tongue and throat are also used in the formation of word sounds. Thus, different sounds can be made, even if your face is moving the same way. The Mit Romney video was to display how reading lips alone can cause misunderstandings. In the video, each word spoken by the maker could be produced by the mouth movements of Mr. Romney even though that wasn't what he actually said.

These factors are the main reason why completely unaided lip reading is extremely difficult. The loss and misunderstanding rate is so high that lip reading may actually be counterproductive to understanding a person's intentions. As for how different languages effect lip reading's effectiveness, I am not really familiar enough with the subject to comment much. I don't deny though, that japanese is probably a lot easier to lip read than chinese.

Thats probably a lot more than most people ever wanted to know about the subject. For the sake of discussion, however, it seemed relevant to go into the subject in more detail. I would greatly enjoy a scenario involving Shizune misunderstanding things through lip reading though. Sorry for rambling.

Edit: to sum things up. Understanding a conversation with lip reading alone is IMPOSSIBLE. Lip reading is a supplement used in conjunction with partial hearing (for those with hearing imparements) or sign language to enhance understanding. Someone who is completely deaf cannot understand what someone says with lip reading alone and I wanted to dispel the myth that they can.

[te-kun]

Lol, batman doesn't count!

]

Anyway, even with all those problems there are lip readers that can do a surprisingly good job at it. I guess lip reading is like trying to talk in a noisy place. Part of the sentence is lost in the noise but you get the idea with a little of effort.

[Saraquill]

A middle ground between cripple girls and linguistics? Dislexia?

Alexia* would be a closer approximation I think, as would Dyspraxia.** I'm not sure if Prosopoagnosia*** would be related, as it's all visual rather than linguistic, but I imagine that it makes communication that much more tricky, especially if you depend on your eyes a lot for cues. Also, the first and the third are connected to brain damage, which would indicate that there could be other issues to deal with.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexia_%28condition%29
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_dyspraxia
***http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia