Learning American Sign Language through personal experience with a deaf friend

Linguistics 1 / Anthropology 104: Fall 2004

American Sign Language

Learning and using Sign Language will be pretty easy to do because there are so many books and web sites available that teaches it to anyone who wants to learn.

In life, people usually take things for granted like the ability to speak and hear. For the last few weeks I have been hanging out with my friend named XXXX. Until I really got to know her, I know that I sure took the ability to listen for granted. I have always seen myself as a healthy individual and my parents have always been very supportive by telling me that I'm pretty smart. So why wouldn't I take those things for granted? Along comes XXXX who is deaf and needs to communicate with her friends and family by using sign language. As a bird sits in a tree near my window, I have no problem hearing it sing. She has been deaf since early childhood and probably will never really hear any of the things that we hear every day. A plane flying by or a car zooming past will never make her turn her head. For XXXX, life is very different. This term paper is a summary of my couple of weeks of hanging out with her. I wrote the term paper with a new appreciation for what life would be like if I couldn't hear. I used to walk around town with my CD player blaring into my headset but from now on I think I will turn it down a bit. But, during our time together I did find out that being deaf does have both good and bad things about it. This repot will try to share some of those things. I also tried to give some of my opinions about the whole situation because I have honestly learned a lot of new things. For example, it is pretty hard to use sign language when you think like a person who hears and it gets a little easier when you change your way of thinking.

Observations

My first observation when I started this project was that when either a child or an adult is deaf, more than just that person is affected. For example, when I first visited XXXX, I saw the yellow triangle shaped sign on her street that said: 'Slow Down -- deaf child in area.' I bet I saw that sign a hundred times but never thought about it or how important it was. When a child is deaf or even hard of hearing, it affects the family and the immediate community. Each has to take a number of things into consideration.

Some of these things include how and where a deaf child is supposed to play, the day-to-day living of the deaf child including the schools and where to work in the future, how to discipline a deaf child, learning to communicate with that child through sign language or special equipment and most of all, coming to terms with the fact that the child is deaf. XXXX is lucky because she has a family that is supportive and well off enough financially to support the handicap of deafness. You also can't take for granted that she lives in a nice and safe community where her neighbors are friendly, helpful and supportive.

How it works

In my research, I found that American Sign Language does not share the grammatical rules we take for granted in the English language. Sure, there are sentences and phrases that are common. But, the hardest part about signing in American Sign Language is that when you use the language, you are basically speaking a foreign langue compared to English. I thought that American Sign Language would simply be a translation of English. You know, like a mime doing repeating the dictionary.

But, American Sign Language uses topic-comment syntax as opposed to English which uses Subject-Object-Verb. American Sign Language in the terms of syntax is actually more like spoken Japanese than it is English. So, realizing that I would not be learning Japanese or American Sign Language overnight, I reconsidered my hypothesis. My next thought was that I would just spell the things I wanted her to know. Ah, no way. Having a conversation by spelling each word is like using Morris Code every time we spoke. The alphabet is easy to learn (see Appendix A) but using just conversing with the alphabet doesn't form words or sentences in a fast or efficient enough way.

Another misconception about American Sign Language is that it is simply a series of hand motions. Although there are plenty of hand movements, hand gestures are only one part of the big picture. A person using American Sign Language also needs to add facial features like raising an eyebrow or curling the lip and mouth to properly sign certain things. The facial and other types of features are a crucial part of the American Sign Language grammatical system. Other things that the hearing person would take for granted when learning American Sign Language is that when describing places or people that are not present the signer has to use the space around himself to give location. With all of these nuances, American Sign Language is very complex.

To make matters worse, XXXX goes to private school and she told me that there are kids from other countries in her class. She told me, through her mother's interpretation of course, that sign languages develop based on their communities because sign language is not universal. What she meant by that is that a person using American Sign Language from Britain would be different than someone from Germany or Japan. Don't let the term 'American' fool you. Each country uses signing in a different way. If you think about this, not only would you have to learn the languages of Britain, Germany or Japan, you would also have to be able to sign in that particular country's version of the sign. This alone would double the learning curve. I think there should be a universal sign language but obviously those of us who can hear can't get the entire world to speak one language.

My research also pointed out that American Sign Language has many vocabulary terms from Old French Sign Language. That is because the nineteenth century a very famous French deaf person named Laurent Clerc was one of the original deaf instructors in the United States. With a smile, XXXX told me to study French and Japanese and then I should be able to sign with her in no time. With all that being said, I know that best way to learn American Sign Language is from a Deaf person.

ADA

One of the most important things about this research that I discovered is the new insights and understanding I have about the Americans With Disabilities Act. "The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, including deaf and hearing impaired people. There are four sections in the law: employment, government, public accommodations, and telecommunications. Each section of the ADA lists services that should be provided for deaf individuals. The ADA adds more protection for handicapped persons to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973." (Rights of Deaf And HOH Under the ADA) The ADA has simplified the life of handicapped people all over the nation.

Telecommunications, for example, has been altered in a way that when a deaf person needs to make a local or long-distance call, a trained telephone relay representative reads a special TDD type and the voice telephone user speaks. The ADA also allows deaf people to be excused from jury duty just because they are deaf or if the person feels they want to participate the court is obligated to provide an interpreter or assistive listening device at no cost. "Stores, Businesses, hotels, theaters, restaurants, retail stores, banks, museums, parks, libraries, and private schools should all provide auxiliary aids and services for communicating with deaf people. Sometimes, written notes are enough to communicate information. At other times, an assistive listening device, TDD, or an interpreter is needed." (Rights of Deaf And HOH Under the ADA) With these benefits and others like medical treatment advantages and new employment requirements, America has become a better place to live for the handicapped.

Conclusion

In conclusion, people often take things in life for granted. For the last few weeks I have been trying to learn about being deaf from my friend. Until I really got to know her, I know I took things like the ability to speak and hear for granted. This term paper was a summary of my couple of weeks of being with XXXX and I tried to write this paper with my new appreciation for what it would be like to be deaf.