@classic33 In the course of my work, I came across a lady who was not English and not only was she deaf but she could not speak either. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her communication skills, however - she could sign, and she had a friend who could communicate in sign language; the friend used to have an interpreter to translate into English. Highly complicated but it worked. I have enough trouble trying to work out what some of the abbreviations the supermarket uses on their receipts
.
As far as watching TV or listening to the radio is concerned, although I am not totally deaf, I have a loop system which plugs into the TV and then transmits the sound to a receiver which my hearing aids can then pick up. I also have a decent pair of conventional headphones which are actually clearer. However, I still often rely on subtitles to be able to understand everything, particularly when people are speaking with regional accents. And I agree with
@classic33, it is much easier to understand people when they are facing you, even if, like me, you can't lip read. One our infants' school teachers taught us all basic sign language even though at the time none of us needed it. I can still remember some bits and pieces of it after all this time. The loop system is used in a lot of shops and banks too, which is most useful.
Where I live in east London can be a nightmare, however. Most of the people who live around me are not English, but Ghanaian, Nigerian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Irish, Scottish, south Asian, Chinese, Turkish and Polish, and not all can even speak English. My own extended family includes people whose native languages are Peruvian Spanish, Mandarin (and what is now known as standard Chinese), Arabic, French, Amharic, amongst others, and my own immediate family speak English, German and Greek - or to be more accurate a mixture of English, German and Greek when we are all together - it's easier. My granddaughters were quite gob-smacked the first time they heard me speaking German and Greek, as they never realised that I could speak these languages as well even though it became obvious when they thought about it. At school, we had to learn French, German and Latin, and in later years there I started learning Russian and Italian, but I can't remember more than the odd few works of either of these. I have friends who are Austrian, so a bit of Austrian German crept in, and I lived just outside Stuttgart so Schwäbisch was often the order of the day. I learnt Greek in Greece and also in Germany. I can read it (although not necessarily understand all of it), but can't write it. The most useful language out of all of these was German. I've worked for various transport companies over the years, and most of the Romanian, Greek and (then) Yugoslav drivers could speak some German, although I did find out at one of the transport companies I worked at that I had more luck communicating in colloquial Greek with the Greek drivers than that company's "posh" Greek director
As far as communication is concerned - with my family and friends, text messages, phone calls, Skype, Vyber, and Facebook are the most usual ones. My daughter and I usually text each other - she is a teacher and deputy department head and can often be busy with school work quite late in the evening, even more so when it is school exam (at the moment it's mock GCSEs) or GCSE marking time. Phone calls tend to be reserved for "important" stuff. One year, when the weather was particularly bad, my daughter, son-in-law, granddaughters and I even "did" Christmas by Skype. I think it was February or maybe March before we actually exchanged Christmas presents. Otherwise, it's emails. downloaded forms, face to face, and occasionally letter for anything more official.
for a very interesting topic of conversation.