Loud people

Well done Fountainpen .I personally find groups of women in their fifties the loudest.. only this week I went for a pub meal with my son ,every thing was nice tables nearby had couples chatting a few had some children with them no problem ,then a table of 5 women came in,oh my goodness the squaking & squeeling, we couldn't hear each other speak ! Sadly this is not a rare occurance ,seems every time I go to a restaurant or cafe if there is a group of women there is no hope of having a conversation.

My friend, her mother, sister and brother all talk very loud. It’s just the way they are. My mum was a teacher and she spoke in a normal gentle voice. She never raised her voice to me or her classes of 30 senior school children no matter how difficult they could be. I too don’t like people talking very loud as it hurts my ears.

Gosh. We'll all be whispering politely and trying not to be bossy at the GN meet up on Friday.

I don't know whether you have these programmes in the UK but when I visit the hospital (regularly) I have to sit in a waiting room (or stand outside which I prefer) as there's a TV talk show with a lady called Ellen. Her audience is permanently hysterical, screaming and yelling for no apparent reason.

I think this is one of the reason people are loud, they've copied it from American TV. My son recently went to a Shakespeare performance and was appalled when the Kiwi audience reacted in the same way!!

Also, advertising encourages the me, me attitude of entitlement which was never prevalent in my youth when the prevailing life-style was 'make do and mend'.

With cellphone, I suppose those users must get used to having conversations in public and it brings out their show-off side.
I've encountered many raucous voices in the street with a seeming delight at their own importance - like little children with 'Watch me everyone!'
Only they've never really grown out of it.

It's more to be pitied than blamed.

The person in question is not a member of this group.

(Me looking to make sure anyone I know now is not present. )

Yes we have a member of a group and that member is very loud indeed. We need a switch so every one else can talk. That persons voice reverberates around the room. It is a bit too much.

Coming home on a late-evening train last year the entire carriage was treated to a young lady phoning her "bestie" and recounting in great detail the goings-on the previous night with her boyfriend. Other passengers studiously avoiding each others' eyes, but there were quite a few raised eyebrows and blushing cheeks!

I've always been told I speak too loud but to me I am speaking normally. I am more of an introvert than extravert so I don't know why I do it.

No,it's not just you. I've noticed more and more lately that people seem to be getting so loud. There's one woman in particular, that I have come to dread sitting within 20 feet of me in my favourite coffee shop. She has such a loud,abrasive voice that I can literally feel my eardrums shuddering after being assaulted by her voice for 20 minutes. It has got to the point where I stick my earphones from my iPod in,even if I'm not actually listening to anything,just to dull the sound. And its not just women who've got louder. I have noticed that a lot of men,especially when they are talking on the phone,raise their voices so the whole shop/bus can hear them.

This reminded me of myself and hubby in a local hotel where a charity pop up sale was being held. On the way out we decided to sit in the bar area for a coffee. There was a table with about 3/4 women talking when one of them suddenly started shrieking with laughter. And I do mean shrieking to the point of near hysteria. I so wanted to tell her to shut up, but how do you tell someone who is obviously having the best fun ever to be quiet! Everyone else in the area was kind of shrinking into themselves to get away from the racket she was making!

The ones who really make me wince are the women on a 'girls night' who've had a few too many Proseccos, the shrieking, and lewd remarks really make me cringe.
They sound like a farmyard of turkeys.

Yes B9exchange I’m with you there. All the fashionable hard surfaces exaggerate noise and I too I long for the days when cafes and restaurants had carpets on the floor, curtains at the windows, and tablecloths, it did absorb so much of the noise! In fact there are various cafes, pubs etc the OH and I now avoid, because the noise levels are so uncomfortable.
Nope - can’t stand those, male or female, in restaurants, cafes pubs who want everyone to hear their conversations. And what they want the world to hear is so often absolute garbage. What’s the saying “Empty vessels make much noise” or something similar.?

Yeah RosieLeah we all know irritating people like this; one comes to my house far too often but since she is invited by ‘she who must be obeyed’ and is going out with her favourite son I just have to grin and bear it. Bloody irritating though and I usually retire hurt with a headache when she finally buggers off home

Teachers do tend to be assertive. There are several in my group of friends, and they seem to do more than their fair share of conversing. I'm the opposite, and have the kind of voice that isn't noticed. I get 'talked over' quite a lot, and am more of a listener than a speaker. I'm a little deaf, too. Even with hearing-aids it's sometimes difficult to follow conversations when there is a lot of background noise.
One thing I DO wonder is, are all Americans as loud as they appear on tv? I caught an American 'house-makeover' programme the other day. Oh. the histrionics. The screaming, yelling and drama of it all. I mentally compared it to DIY SOS, which I really enjoy, and switched it off in the middle. I couldn't take any more!

By the way my husband is hearing impaired and even he doesn't speak as loudly in a public place as some of those without the disability.

There are some folk who do seem to dominate in the loud voice department. I'm convinced a lot if young people speak loudly due to playing music, ear phones, too loudly. Also they are accustomed now to speaking on phones outside where their voice just to them, disappears. Children too seem to be even more noisy again accustomed to noisy households. I am sorely tempted to just join in a "loud" conversation saying to the guilty party "you obviously want all to know what you are saying so you must want a response or comment or two".

Ooh. I felt a bit guilty reading this thread as I grew up in a very crowded household where if you didn’t shout you didn’t get heard. Although I’m much better now, I can still get louder if necessary. The thing I hate most about my voice though is my laugh. If it’s something mildly funny, I sort of chuckle in a slightly sinister way but if it’s hilarious, my first sound is really high pitched. A sort of ‘ha’ before I’ve actually started to laugh. I’ve heard myself on videos. It’s awful and it sometimes makes people jump. It comes so naturally though I don’t know how not to as laughter is spontaneous and shouldn’t be switched on and off. So apologies but I’m not a bad person!

I have become noise sensitive in recent years in crowds. Apparently, it’s normal. Also, deaf when there is background noise, also normal. So I struggle to hear and wonder if I shout but also hate all the ‘babble’ going on around me. Makes my head spin.

It’s also annoying when people speak really quietly though. I hate saying ‘Pardon’ over and over again. I usually say it once, maybe twice, then I smile and say ‘Oh right and laugh nervously’ which isn’t a good thing to do if someone was trying to tell you someone has just died.

One of my sons has been trained in voice projection. Sadly, he wasn’t trained on voice switch off again. So you can hear him upstairs from downstairs. Fortunately, he has a nice voice though so it’s not piercing. Just loud.

Takes allsorts I suppose. And I shall apologise for my awful laugh

I am a retired teacher and I hope I don't speak too loudly. DH often accuses me of mumbling (he is slightly deaf). I tried not to raise my voice when teaching, as speaking quietly makes people listen more attentively to what is being said. in my experience. Agree about the sound of groups of people in cafes and pubs being a bit intrusive, though this is sometimes due to the acoustics of the building.

I was sitting on the train not long ago at a table seat. The woman sitting across from me had shrunk down in her seat and was clearly having great difficulty with her breathing. She wheezed and struggled to draw in every breath, sighing with the effort and frustration every so often. As she struggled more and more and shrank further down in her seat, I was on the verge of asking if she wanted me to get help for her, however before I could ask, she took her phone from her bag and made a call. When the person at the other end answered, this tiny woman rose in her seat and bellowed into the phone ' DAAARRR-LING - IT'S ME!' and continued her conversation in a voice so loud and strong it made every head in the carriage turn!

My dad used to call anyone like that “the voice that breathed over Eden”! I don’t know what it means literally but I use it about one of our neighbours who bellows out. I know what you mean about a woman’s voice that is loud and harsh. I have a soft voice and can’t get myself heard sometimes. I bet my husband would laugh at that and exclaim how loud he thinks I am!

I am not in the best of health at the moment but last week went to lunch with a group of friends. The man who sat next to me does wear a hearing aud but he shouted right through the meal. Add to that two tables of women behind us and it is a large restaurant and by the end of the meal I was feeling very battered by noise. I drove home feeling quite emotional and even had a little cry. My friend who sat with her back to the window didnt find it noisy. But everywhere seems to have become very noisy and everyone has to speak louder to be heard. I am not hard of hearing but my husband is deaf in one ear and is too vain to wear a hearing aid so is always tell me to speak up. I do so love some silence.

I meet my friend every Saturday for coffee and a catch up and during the bad weather we have had we meet in a local pub/restaurant for a couple of hours.
This past few weeks a chap has been going in for a drink with a couple of his pals and he has the loudest voice I have ever heard, I now know what motor bike he had when he was young and the cars he has owned all the differant models of pushbike he has had along with all the faults of his central heating system I am fully up to date with his love life and know what he receives for his pension,he usually sits about 6 tables away from us but we can't help but have to listen to him he is so loud.

Do parents still (or did they ever?) tell children to quieten down?

OH & I went for a coffee yesterday in a cafe we'd not been in before. Near closing time so just us & two other women. One of them spoke loudly & it was like being in a Church....it was like she was preaching. She was about 30yrs old. The whole time we were in I felt like I was having God pushed down my throat. She wasn't even talking to us. She was still at it when we left.

I think, generally, that society is louder because, in the past, in public spaces like cafes, on trains, etc. if people were sat on their own, they were usually quiet, but now they'll be talking into their mobiles, so almost everyone is talking - some louder than others!

P.S. We have one very loud, but nice neighbour whom we call 'Joyce the Voice"