Slower and louder doesn’t help.

Growing up in the southwest has exposed me to conversations where language was a huge road block.  I’ve also been fortunate enough to do my fair share of traveling with the same issue coming up.  I’ll be the first to admit that not knowing any other languages is a fault.  I try my best to pick up little things when I go to a country so I’m not completely lost.  Having said that, there is one other thing I understand; just because you yell it in English does not change the fact that it’s IN ENGLISH!!!  I’m baffled by people that seem to think that when a person from another country doesn’t understand them it must be because I didn’t say it loud enough.  There is a scene in Scrubs that sums this up perfectly when Carla’s supposedly non-English speaking brother portrayed by Freddy Rodriquez looks at Turk and says “Yeah, well that yelling it slower and louder isn’t as helpful as you might think!”  This goofy practice first really hit me in ASL class.  When my professor forbid us from finger-spelling or spelling out in sign what we were trying to say.   He would tell us “If I asked you to tell me what an apple was, how would spelling A-P-P-L-E would help me?”  That’s the truth, in a nut shell we assume that we can force feed our message by hammering someone with volume.  Why?