Being deaf has one big advantage when you're travelling abroad

[bijou]

...

Removed from the comfort zone of effortless communication using their native language, lots of travellers freeze or start shouting. Or they'll head overseas armed with a little phrasebook and join tours with English-speaking guides. Deaf travellers go equipped with a lifetime's experience of finding creative solutions to communication obstacles. Having been born deaf, dealing with this has become part of my daily life to the point that I don't even notice it now. And it comes in very handy when travelling. Coupled with attitudes towards deafness around the world, that are, let us say, interesting, it ensures lots of memorable experiences.

In places where politically correct language and attitudes haven't arrived, people are free to describe deafness in gloriously insulting ways. Like the leather goods seller who ran up to me and my friend in Djemma el-Fna in Marrakech, saying his brother "was, was, was ..." - he was clearly searching for a word that would convey "deaf". We waited with anticipation, what would he come up with? Eventually, he gave up and enthusiastically mimed chopping off his tongue, then was delighted when we pointed at our ears and nodded in agreement. From Hanoi all the way south to Saigon, locals used goldfish-like mouth movements accompanied with raised eyebrows and questioning expressions to symbolise deafness. But, you know what? Give me that any day over the phrases considered PC here in Britain: "hearing challenged" or "hearing impaired", to skirt around the fact that I am, at the end of the day, bloody deaf. In the supposedly "backward" cultures of the developing world, people point and gesture. "You deaf?" Then they shrug in mild interest or laugh and elbow each other in fascination. Either way, they never seem to recede in awkwardness or embarrassment; rather than stumbling around the elephant in the room, they're prodding it, feeding it ... I love every bit of it.

...

link

Interesting article, especially her views on 'help' for the handicapped.

[Lauri]

it has its perks every now and then.. 

[bijou]

It is an aspect I had never thought about, since I am obsessive about learning a bit of the language of whichever country I am visiting.

[franksolich]

I dunno.

I never had a language problem wherever I've been.

Other problems, yes, but never a language problem.

I suppose it depends upon how one presents himself; I fondly remember all those in London, in Paris, in Rome, in Kiev, in small towns all over, who upon noticing my deafness, would take my hand or shoulder and walk me across a street, because I do have a habit of not looking.

Young children, good-looking women, old women, beautiful women, men, aesthetic women, who had absolutely no idea who or what I was, seemed to do this instinctively and intuitively.