Pardon? Say what? Come again? Say that again? Eh? Can you repeat that? Sorry? You what? Aye? I missed that? Hmm?
It doesn't matter how you say it, they all mean the same thing: you didn't hear what was just said.
I've been thinking recently about how often I don't hear what someone has said and how often I ask them to repeat themselves. In some situations I will ask repeatedly, no matter how many time it takes, until I hear. In others, I will only ask once or twice. And, in others, I will not ask at all.
With family and close friends I am happy to ask repeatedly; most, if not all, of them know I am partially deaf and they are usually happy to repeat themselves until the cows come home. Sometimes, and I guess it depends on their mood, they don't want to repeat themselves - this annoys me quite a bit, if what they just said is not worth repeating why was it worth saying in the first place?
The people I really struggle with are the quietly and soft spoken ones. Some people just refuse to speak up and it will not matter how many times I ask them to repeat it, I will never hear them properly! I find myself avoiding speaking to people who I know speak really quietly, just to avoid the hassle - I wish I didn't do this because I'm sure it looks rude to them and I'm no doubt missing out on some good conversation. The obvious answer here is to tell them that I have trouble hearing what they say; I really don't feel comfortable doing that and I can't remember a time when I ever have done. I really should make the effort to start in future.
In the opening paragraph I said that in some cases I will never ask the person to repeat themselves. I used to do this a lot - I used to be too embarrassed about my hearing loss, I tried to hide it as much as possible - I would either try and guess what they said based on the odd word I'd heard or the context of the conversation or simply nod, laugh or give a short answer like "yes" or "no". I realised some years ago that this was a stupid thing to do, I cringe at the amount of times I must have given stupid and meaningless answers. I'm sure a lot of people do this exact thing all the time, it's an easy way out.
It's rarely uncomfortable to ask someone to repeat themselves in a one-to-one conversation; a group conversation can, on the other hand, be very difficult. It is a good idea to position yourself somewhere where you will have the best chance of hearing; this is something you can do when you know that one person in the group is going to be doing most of the talking: the teacher at school/college, someone giving a presentation to a group, and so on. It's not so easy when you don't have a single person to concentrate on: when you are chatting with friends or in an office meeting, it is particularly difficult if there is also background noise such as background chatter or office air-conditioning. It is too easy to loose the conversation when you are having to listen for voices coming from all directions.
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