how do deaf people lip read words like INTERGALACTIC?

Being nearly deaf and having had to do a lot of lip reading over the past 20 years, I can tell you that we don’t always understand specific words if they are said alone. However, putting it in the context of a sentence helps. For example:

I probably wouldn’t know that you were saying “intergalactic”, if that was all you said, but if you said “Many people believe UFOs are intergalactic space travelers.” I would probably catch the word because of the rest of the sentence.

Often times we don’t catch the word at all and have to have it repeated or put in a different sentence to understand what the person is talking about.

Hope that helps.

Lipreading involves much more than just the lips. There are cues in the movement of the jaw and tongue as well. But even still, it is an imperfect science at best.

I live near a town called Babylon. Because, when lip reading, the word Babylon is indistinguishable from the phrase “baby lion”, the sign language name for the town is, in fact, “Baby Lion”.

Lips don’t move when pronouncing “intergalactic,” but the tongue certainly does. Taps behind the teeth are t’s or d’s; the tongue’s rolling back usually indicates a liquid (l or r), etc.

Good question–a ventriloquist might have insight also.

Well, you know I can’t tell you exactly HOW they do it… just that they do. And very well.

My mother could be standing right next to my brother and me and not pick up on anything. So we figured if we were all the way across the room, we could hatch a plan, no problem. She would catch us every time. It took us years to figure out she was reading our lips.

Yes, I know. Brilliant children.