I should point out that it's a very gray concept, as ubertuber shows.
Being deaf does not mean you can't hear anything (or just any particular thing), it only means you have a large loss for a given set of frequency ranges. (This has been a personal pet peeve for a long time, people not understanding this.)
In my case, my loss is profound but only for frequencies between ~3kHz and ~8kHz. It's actually fairly normal in low frequencies. So human communication is more difficult for me than listening to instrumental music.
In addition, there are people who lost all hearing in one ear but are perfectly fine in the other.
And you know, it's really no surprise to me that deaf people are (mostly) awesome, friendly folks. We are, after all, human.
raeanna74, I'm surprised that your friend managed to make it in life until he was
29 without figuring out that hiding misunderstanding serves no purpose. But I guess I can't be too surprised, as the same thing is true for people who can hear too. Everyone pretends they understand, to an extent, what their peers are saying. I can very easily tell when someone does not understand me, because I've seen it so many times in the last 20 years. My friends figure out there's no escaping that, so they fess up every time now.
