How can I learn to read lips?
I’ve never studied lipreading, but in the past I’ve spent a lot of time with Deaf and Hard of Hearing signers, who have had a lot of experience with oral instruction and lipreading. From what they’ve said, lipreading isn’t so much a discrete skill as it is a holistic examination of body language, facial expression and actual lip and moth movements. The problem, as it has been explained to me, is that only about 10 percent of sounds used in speaking can be discretely ‘read’ from the lips or mouth. Everything other than those 10 percent must be assumed, inferred, or interpreted. And that’s assuming the speaker is in clear line-of-sight, isn’t obscuring his or her mouth with their hands (as many people do during speech), and doesn’t have a moustache that obscures the lips. And that doesn’t even touch on individual differences in speech and accents, which can greatly affect the whole process. I don’t have any specific suggestions other than to consult your library for books on deaf instruc
