1. You can communicate through windows 2. Sign language is a 3-D Language 3. You can sign with your mouth full 4. Hearing parents can communicate with their Deaf child 5. You can sign underwater 6. Sign Language is a neat way to express yourself 7. You can communicate across a room or via mirror without shouting 8. Sign language is beautiful 9. You can make friends with Deaf people 10. Sign language brings together Hearing & Deaf people
Also if you really want to learn most deaf people are so happy that you are interested in learning and will be super patient and work with you.
And it’s a really great thing to be able to do for any job because imagine having to go everywhere with someone that can translate for you or with paper to write or trying to read lips and just going to grab a cup of coffee and Hey, the barista knows sign language. They aren’t great but you get to speak with them and order your coffee in the way that’s natural to you like that would just make your day. Or a teacher that can talk and sign so classes don’t have to divide?? Or a therapist that can sign?? Hearing people signing 2k15 honestly.
I’ve been learning to help my HoH/deaf customers, so have some links!
There’s a website where you can learn ASL (American Sign Language) on your own, free and it’s a 31 Day program! The woman on there, her name is Rochelle Barlow, she runs the site and she actually is a homeschool teacher and teaches ASL. I am passing this on to some of you guys cause most of y’all on here is open-minded and curious and it is something important to learn.
I truly believe this site is helpful for some people who can not afford to going to ASL classes, or someone like me that just enjoys learning something new. This site will help with that. Once you sign up you will put in your email address and Rochelle sends you emails on tips on how to sign, gives you practice sheets, and gives you your weekly videos. And its all online. No need to paying for anything. (Unless if you want to she has something very different to this program)
IMO and yes, this site is really amazing and is important because you never know if someone who is deaf or HOH needs help, if you end up losing your hearing ability this is something you will at least have on the back of your head, and it is just like any other language and should be taught.
We had one (1) lesson on it in second grade, i remember what lion is and how to spell my name, nothing more. I’m not deaf or hard of hearing, but it would be really nice to help the people who are when they are communicating with me to understand what I’m saying. I really want sign language to be taught in all schools.
I can spell out my name in sign language, but because we were learning the French alphabet at the same time , those handsigns are permanently associated with the French for them in my head
So I had a good think about this, based off of what I have written lately. As I go further into my novel, do even more research into different types of sign, and start on the arc that is written solely from the POV of my deaf character, I’ve begun to realize some other differences between signed and spoken dialogue.
For one thing, punctuation doesn’t apply in the same way. There is punctuation in sign language, but as I’ve talked about before, it is mostly facial; therefore, you describe it as a part of the dialogue tags. So then, what do about the commas, colons and semi-colons? In this case, the n-dash is your friend! The aforementioned punctuation marks indicate changes in tone, alterations of pace and pauses. Therefore, they can be replaced with an n-dash, like so
“You and I – I don’t think we can continue.”
And fingerspelled words would be written as single letters, hyphenated into a word:
”You and I – going to L-O-N-D-O-N.”
For another, the syntax of your translated signed dialogue is subtly different. One sign can ususally mean several different words and filler words are absent. If someone were to say “really big.” in sign, they might just make the sign for “big” and super over-exaggerate.
So, verbal dialogue version:
“It was really, really big!” Lottie jumped and down in excitement, her eyes shining.
And the signed dialogue version:
“The dog was huge!” Lottie flung out her hands into the word, making it larger than it needed to be, bouncing on her heels.
Keeping in mind that large, big, huge, bountiful (and other connected synonyms) are all the same sign.
I don’t like to write signed language in the syntax that it would be signed in (Name, yours, what instead of “what is your name”). Not only is this confusing for non-signing readers, but it also reads as childish or overly-simplistic for readers who don’t understand sign, which reinforces the harmful stereotype of deaf people being stupid/infantilisation of deaf people. It is impossible to truly do signed language justice in writing, because it’s a language made for hands, bodies and faces.
This all comes together to mean that the sentence structure of dialogue in sign will be different. You would use less contractions (isn’t, you’re, might’ve etc), fewer modifiers and shorter chunks of dialogue with the description of the sign in between.
If it reads differently or feels strange, that’s okay: signed language is different to verbal language and so they won’t sound the same as one another in writing. They’re more like cousins or step-siblings than part of the same direct family group. You’re utilizing different descriptors and tools.
Hopefully, this also answers the repeated issue of differentiation, which has come up time and time again from various people. Best of luck to you all with your writing x
wupacing 