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How difficult is learning sign language?
Bionic Monkey
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
So, after being laid off last fall, I'm finally returning to school to train for an actual career. At this point, I'm not sure if I'll even have the free time or open credits to take some voluntary electives, but if I do, I think I'd like to start learning sign language. This is something I've been contemplating for a few years, and this is basically the first opportunity I've had to do so.
The problem:
I'm fucking terrible at learning foreign languages. I took Spanish in high school, and again in college, and later took a year of german. The end result is I can count to 10 in both languages, and that's about it. I understand that sign is effectively a foreign language as well, but my perception (rightly or wrongly) is that American sign will still maintain the grammar and structure of English, so I'll be learning 1:1 on the words, and not have the same type of struggles typical in learning a new language.
I'm basically looking for people that have learned sign as an adult, and how it compared to learning other languages?
The problem:
I'm fucking terrible at learning foreign languages. I took Spanish in high school, and again in college, and later took a year of german. The end result is I can count to 10 in both languages, and that's about it. I understand that sign is effectively a foreign language as well, but my perception (rightly or wrongly) is that American sign will still maintain the grammar and structure of English, so I'll be learning 1:1 on the words, and not have the same type of struggles typical in learning a new language.
I'm basically looking for people that have learned sign as an adult, and how it compared to learning other languages?
Bionic Monkey on
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Unfortunately, that's not the case. There is a signed language that's one-to-one english, but the ASL teacher that I had pretty much said, (paraphrased) that's not a language, it's signed english. You'll have a new, somewhat unfamiliar gramatical structure to learn if you look into ASL.
That said, I. Fucking. Loved. Learning ASL. Like no other language before. It's beautiful to watch, and fun to do, and that's intrinsically motivating. Plus, you can teach all your friends the signed alphabet and totally talk in code, or signal eachother in really loud clubs. Like anything, the more time you make to immerse yourself in places where you need to rely on it, the faster you'll progress. Failing that, make a date with another student in the class so you can practice signing and reading signs. That'll be invaluable. And fun!
Did I mention it's super fun?
So if she can do it I imagine you can too! Just be diligent.
Motivation is key. :winky:
Also, the sign for 'confused' is very close to the sign for 'washing machine'
Fortunately, sign language is the sort of thing that you could easily pick up from youtube... so... start there and see how long it takes you to do the alphabet from memory in a reasonable period of time.
Most ASL classes also force you to learn about deaf culture. Don't even get me started on fucking deaf culture.
Only brining it up because Im interested in learning sign language as well.. hope this isnt a hijack..
They are also big on shunning anybody who dares to get a hearing aid. It's like leaving a church. Suddenly all the people who are still members pretend you don't exist.
And all the while they are teaching you this in your ASL class you are told that you can't judge them because it's their culture, not yours.
Hmm... I wonder how hard a sell that would be to my wife.
That said, the earliest I'll be doing this is this fall, so trying some basic stuff on youtube, and seeing how I pick it up is a great idea.
It's too late to start looking tonight, but when I do, does anybody have any particular sites or videos that would be a good place to start?
This is not entirely true, and you are a silly goose for making such an offensive statement. There are some extremists in every culture (speak english or get the fuck out). You'll find that the majority of the ill-will Deaf people place toward hearing aids and cochlear implants is from societies "oh you are fixed now that you can hear" point of view.
I took ASL for 3 years, caught on really quickly and absolutely love it. The culture and the language are brilliant. Don't let people scare you, if you think it is something you will enjoy try it out. If not, then don't do it. It really gives you a great perspective on the world along with a useful life skill.
Also, this website is a life saver
http://www.aslpro.com/
Also, if you really have questions about Deaf culture and the like pick up a copy of For Hearing People Only (FHPO).
This sounds remarkably similar to the snide comments I've heard about education, like "Ooh, you're a college boy now. Too good for us, eh?". What's the point in being proud about a disability? I'm honestly interested, as it's such an alien mindset.
If the comment wasn't snide, then I just interpreted it incorrectly. :P
On the subject itself, do take a look at youtube and the links provided here. They seem like a decent place to start.
The "disability (Deaf call it an inability)" is what defines them, not through their inability to hear but through their upbringing and day to day life; it is who they are. Their deafness has not limited them as people, so why should they be ashamed? The fact of the matter is that it is a debate that will never die. The Hearing community mainly views the Deaf community as people who are disabled and get together as a support group, when really it's more of a community that gets together as a neighborhood.
when you look at deafness more of as a language barrier than a disability things make a little more sense, but as long as you hold on to the belief that Deaf people are disabled you won't really understand.
Then again I'm not deaf, I've just spent a lot of time with the Deaf community, so I don't have a full understanding either.
Since this thread seems to have some knowledgeable people in it, I was wondering if anyone knows of a particular reason why nearly every language area has their own sign language? Were they just developed separately, or what else could be the reason, as one would think that standardization would be possible in this area? I have once been taught some sign language basics(now completely forgotten), and at the time I thought that signs might be more or less universal, but that wasn't obviously the case.
As an aside though, in terms of price, life for a deaf person is usually significantly more expensive than for a hearing person, such that an implant could actually save you money.
Anyway, I worked at a college with a huge ASL program and deaf community and I have to agree with the Scrotum Man's statements. Lots of a sense of entitlement on their part and some disturbing beliefs that are quite common. People had signs on their doors extolling the virtues of being deaf. Good for them for making the best of a bad situation, but it's still a bad situation.
On the plus side, I've been able to look at that aslpro site, and watch a handful of videos on youtube. Looking at some that lay out basic syntax for entry level phrases, this looks like something I could probably learn.
As for what made Spanish and German difficult; German was just far more complex than I anticipated, not least of which being three different ways to say "the" with no discernable method of determining which. Spanish just bogged me down with two dozen tenses for every verb, when it seemed like 40% of all the verbs were irregular.
Of course now that I was deployed for a year and coming back I forgot most of it so I have to pick it back up again. Weeee.
Same here. I had no problem picking up Spanish (well, what I could from the relatively bad teachers we had) and new programming languages. But ASL? I could barely get the alphabet right half the time.
Obviously you'd have to seek out a deaf person, or someone raised in a deaf community to get a real, specific answer to this question, but I think I can propose a metaphor that might make more sense. Replace deaf with gay, and you'd have a very similar dynamic, assuming there were devices or techniques which could change you from homosexual to heterosexual.
The gay community doesn't see homosexuality as a disability, while some in the heterosexual culture do. If there were "conversion" techniques, I'd expect a very strong reaction from the gay community as well, perhaps with ostracism against those who put those techniques to use. Some in the heterosexual community would say, "what's the big deal? now you can be free of the stigmas of gayness, and be straight like all the normal people are." And I'd hope you could see how grossly insensitive and naive that statement is.
Again, this is me trying to give an explanation based on a 20-minute discussion that barely touched on some of this stuff in one of my ASL classes, and should be considered a barely educated guess at best.
That said, whoever said "I wish we didn't have to learn deaf culture in ASL", that's pretty silly. If you learn about spanish, you learn about different spanish cultures. If you learn german, you learn about german culture. This holds true for any language. Why? Because there happens to be a significant correlation between speaking a certain language and growing up in certain cultures. And so, if you're in a situation where you must rely on, say, ASL you're going to want to know at least a little bit about the culture of the person you're communicating with: both so you can communicate better, and so you're less likely to say something that makes you look like the king or queen of silly geese.
Developed seperately, and therefore built around different cultural expectations and connotations. The ASL sign for kitchen involves a hand movement that evokes the motion of flipping something in a frying pan. A sign from another culture, where people cooked mostly soups (as a random ass example), might emphasize a stirring motion. Or if kitchens were associated with many people eating together, it might emphasize that concept instead.
TL;DR Signing is fucking awesome.
If I remember correctly a good rule of thumb is that english goes: Subject -> Verb -> Object. I love apples. My wife's ass is hotter than his wife's ass. In ASL, it usually goes Verb -> Object -> Subject. Love apples, me. Hotter than his wife's ass, my wife's ass. etc.
ASL isn't without its quirks, and I wouldn't say it's any easier to learn than other languages overall, but it isn't hard in the same ways that gave you trouble in Spanish and German. I think you'll be okay with ASL. Plus, it's fucking awesome! I've mentioned that, right? :P
Nay. You put them in a time context.
I'm cooking something. I cooked something two months ago. Tomorrow I'll cook something cool and you'll be all, holy shit that's cool!
All of those use the same sign for cook. (God, I must be hungry.)
It seems that their way of thinking is diametrically opposed to my own. I prefer to fix what is broken and improve what is not, but being satisfied with what one has is a valid position. Just not something I could ever adopt.
It would be cool to know sign language, but I'm not learning the local version, as pretty much no-one uses it, and I wouldn't find anyone to use ASL with, if I were to learn it.
Glad it helped some. Again, I hope it's close to what a deaf person would tell you, but I'll be the first to say that I had it wrong if someone comes along with a better understanding of the subject. So long as you can understand that you and they disagree that there's anything to fix in the first place, rather than it being about "not wanting to improve." But this is straying into D&D territory.
There's a pretty big difference between someone's sexual preference and whether or not their "hardware" works properly. A deaf person can't just fake being able to hear and function exactly the same as someone with perfect ears.
Hate to sound like a dick (and like I'm just parroting people), but facts are facts. Deaf people getting angry at other deaf people for getting implants is fucking silly goosery at its finest. It'd be like cripples getting pissed at other cripples for getting spine implants, if such a thing existed in the capacity I'm talking about.
...and in the interest of not turning this into a chat thread, I actually do have a related question re: Cochlea implants: How well do they work? I anticipate losing quite a bit of my hearing in the next twenty years or so. Is it just sort of a Rush Limbaugh deal, where you can only hear four tones or whatever?
I wasn't trying to equate sexuality and deafness, I was trying to make a point about how people in the deaf culture see deafness being equivalent to how the gay community sees homosexuality, as well as how both are treated by those hostile to both. I'm not saying, "this is how it is" but "this is the argument." It's an argument I'm sympathetic to, but I'm pretty shit at proving my points in general. If you're interested in the issue, I'd take it to D&D and maybe read some stuff from the deaf culture side (which I haven't done).
Incidentally, I think it should be clear that the statement "all deaf people will shun someone who gets implants/hearing aids" needs to be shot in the mouth. I think both of my ASL profs had hearing aids and were definitely members of the deaf community.
Not a clue. I'd make sure you get a second, third and fourth opinion, from people who've had Cochlear implants.. uh.. implanted, and from some sort of qualified medical professional. Two seconds of googling got me "sounds are more mechanical."
Ah, okay. I misunderstood. My mistake.
Hmm. So not very good, then. Thanks for the info.
That's part of my problem with their whole thing. Every person I've seen try to justify their behavior comes up with some sort of comparison like that that proves exactly fuck all.
It's some weird form of logic they stole from 1984. They don't want their disability to define them (which is fine) but then anybody who tries to not be deaf gets cut off from the group. So they don't want it to define them but they let it define them anyways.
After about the 5th time my ASL teacher told me I wasn't allowed to judge them because it wasn't my culture I asked her what her opinion was of cultures that practice female genital mutilation. And as soon as she started to answer I informed her that she wasn't allowed to have an opinion because it wasn't her culture...
Yeah, ended up transferring classes after that.
There really is not as much shunning and elitism as you lead on, first hand I've made friends involved in the Deaf community some with aids, some without and some who chose to get implants for their young kids. It takes time for any culture to adapt to new ideas, cochlear implants are not as reviled as they once were. But just like every culture you have a few extreamist nut jobs
This was part of the approved ASL curriculum that was supposed to teach us about the wonderful deaf culture. It may not be all of them but apparently the people designing the curriculum/teaching materials are quite proud of it.
Avoiding the deaf culture debate, this is my input:
Learning sign language is really fun, and pretty easy. I started learning it while my wife (then girlfriend) was learning it in college and she taught me a few signs. I would sign what I knew, spell what I didn't, and we could have entire conversations without ever saying a word. It's also useful for communicating when you can't say a word, like over long distances, in loud environments, when you don't want to be overheard, etc.
If you want 1:1 sign language to English, you're looking for SEE (Signed Exact English). It is not as widely adopted as ASL (American Sign Language), which is what you're most likely going to want to learn and sign if you want to be understood by the majority of the signing public.
The struggles with learning the grammar of ASL are just in letting go of having to use filler words:
"Do you want to go to the club at 9?" = "You want go club 9?"
"Don't touch that!" = "No touch!"
"The baby is taking a bath." = "Baby bath."
You probably get the idea. Your facial expressions and the context of the conversation replace all the extra words that you would normally say but that don't have a sign associated with them. I think it probably makes the language easier to learn than other languages, because it's not about conjugation and tenses and all that stuff. It's about context and communicating ideas. I'm not particularly good at learning languages, but sign is pretty easy to pick up.
Also, a great thing to do if you ever have kids is to teach them some sign language. They can understand sign language and even sign themselves much earlier than they can speak, so it gives them a way to communicate with you other than crying. Before my daughter could talk she could tell me if she was hungry, if she wanted something, if she didn't want something, if she was done with something, and if she wanted up or down. She also randomly knows the sign for gorilla. When your child can sign "all done" when she's done eating instead of just crying or whining until you figure out what she wants, it saves a lot of headaches for both of you.
tl/dr: ASL is pretty easy to learn, pretty fun, and pretty useful. Give it a try. You'll probably enjoy it.
That sounds awesome. The issue of dropping the "extra" words and using facial expressions to convey meaning, lack of tenses, etcetera actually sounds like it would be extremely easy for me and the particular way I learn, especially compared to the difficulties I've had with other languages. I'm still going to watch videos and try to learn some basic vocabulary/alphabet stuff in the next several months, but I'm pretty convinced to at least take a 101 course this fall, and see how it goes.
Everybody here has been awesome, and super helpful.