I’d Like to Buy a Vowel
If you’ve lived long enough to experience presbycusis, (age-related hearing loss) it’s possible that you’ve lost your ability to hear high-frequency sounds. Believe it or not, that can come with the side effect of not being able to clearly differentiate between consonants. In speech, that translates to the consonant sounds S, F, Th, Sh, V, K, and P. These sounds are vital, of course, because they allow you to tell the difference between similar-sounding words—for example, “shop” and “pop” or “keep” and “peep.”