Hi, I see this topic is a bit old but still I hope someone will answer, about this "magic lipreading" I still haven't fully gotten it, how realistic is it? Because lots of times when someone is talking and not gesturing, he/she also turns around for a second, or is sitting next to the deaf person, or is partial light, or even says brands, names, slang expressions, and I always ask myself if it's really that easy to understand the difference between similar words by how the lips move, most of all when someone is also talking fast. I'm not deaf and I don't know ASL (I'm trying to learn the basics of it because I find it interesting and I'd like to be able to comunicate with a deaf person if I ever got to meet one) so I really have no idea, but to me it seems almost impossible to be able to understand more than a few words by lipreading, even when someone is saying just one word, really slow, like "I'm sorry" or "I got it" I barely understand it, now I get that deaf people have a lot more practice, but still I'd think they often misunderstand similar words, first one that pops into my mind "cane" and "came", if the sentence doesn't clarify which word is it, wouldn't there be a lot more incomprehension? I'd understand if the writers don't want to bore the viewers by having the deaf asking all the time "did you say xxx or yyy?" but I'm curious about how it really is. By what I've read here so far I got that it's unrealistic, but I'd like to know how much, like if someone says a sentence talking normal speed, no signs, how much is it really possible to understand? I've also read someone who said "if they can read lips so well then why should the hearing even learn ASL" and that is also something I've asked myself, like Emmett or Travis don't even speak and they seem to have more difficulties with lipreading, but Daphne talks so good you can hardly tell she has a pronunciation "problem" (I don't wanna be offensive, I just don't know how else to call it, english is not my first language), and she seems to understand everything, like I was just watching the scene were she's in the car with the wheelchair boy from the clinic (I'm behind with the tv schedule) and the car's kinda dark inside, and he's sitting next to her and not facing her and he said names of famous skateboarders and brands of boards, and Daphne seemed to have no problem, that looked really unrealistic to me! So to wrap it up, if someone speaks, not making any signs, not slow but not too fast, not using slang but saying names and brands, what's the average percentage of what a deaf person can understand by just watching the lips? Thank you for the answer, I'm really curious and I hope I didn't offend the deaf community in any way, and if I did I'm really sorry, it was never my intention, but please tell me so I can avoid making the same mistake in the future. Thx :)
