What are the noises of protest from waking people; attempted speech or something else?
• We cannot say that every sound necessarily represents attempted communication – some of those strange noises might be no more than mutilated snores, belches or grunts.
However, anyone with experience of doing guard duty will be familiar with the effects and hazards of waking someone to start their watch. Often their first reactions definitely amount to talking in their sleep, sometimes misleadingly intelligibly.
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When abroad I have been woken from particularly deep sleep by a phone call in my hotel room, and then I hear myself thanking the desk operator for my morning wake-up call – when what he was trying to tell me was that I had an international call from my wife. How much sense she got from me in the subsequent conversation I cannot say, but she found my mumbles very amusing.
Jon Richfield, Somerset West, South Africa