Apr 24, 2021 21:00:00

What is the most difficult language to read with lip reading?

The difficulty of lip reading , which reads what you are talking about by looking at the movement of your lips, varies depending on the language. Writer Dan Nosowitz explains which of the more than 6000 languages in the world are difficult to read and why.

What Is the Hardest Language in the World to Lipread? --Atlas Obscura
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/lipreading-around-the-world

An essential element of lip reading is the speaker's visual information. Various movements expressed by the body, such as lip movements, eye movements, and throat movements, help lip reading and help to accurately grasp the speaker's intentions.

Nosowitz says it's difficult to make a clear statement about 'a language that is difficult to read.' This is because individual experience has a great influence on the acquisition of lip reading, and a person who is familiar with a specific language is not necessarily familiar with another language, so the ease of acquisition is objectively judged. Requires a lot of guesswork. Still, under some conditions, the languages that are difficult to read are the languages spoken in India, such as Hebrew, Chechen, Japanese, Hindi, and Tamil, Nosowitz said. Points out.

Sounds that occur without relying on the lips, such as 'd,' 'g,' 'n,' and 'k,' are generally considered difficult to recognize with the eyes, and languages in which these are often used should be difficult to read, says Nosowitz. Says. In addition, the languages that use the ' guttural' that is often used in Hebrew and Chechen to tune in the back of the mouth, and the 'tone ' that distinguishes the meaning of words by the pitch of the sound, which is found in Japanese and Chinese, can be seen only visually. Nosowitz points out that it is difficult to make a judgment and lip reading is difficult.

In addition, some languages are difficult to read from a cultural point of view.

A study from Kumamoto University reveals that Japanese speakers do not require more visual information in conversation than English speakers, and focus only on hearing. There is also a study that Japanese people do not express their emotions during conversation as much as people in North America, and it is thought that lip reading is difficult for Japanese, which has few visually noticeable elements during conversation. Another cause of weakening the visual component is the mustache, which hides the movement of the lips, Nosowitz said. One of the reasons why lip reading is difficult in Indian languages is that many Indians have mustaches.

Nosowitz says that lip reading requires not only understanding the phonemes used in the language, but also understanding the whole sentence and getting visual clues, but lip reading alone can tell the speaker's intentions. He also points out that it is difficult to grasp everything.