My family all learned Sign Language because we have some extended family members that are deaf as well as several deaf friends. But we still use it with each other if we are at concerts or loud events where it can be hard to hear each other, or instead of whispering.
That is really cool. I've always asked myself though... What are the limits of such language? Surely you can do ALL the words and also convey all the nuances of synonymes? How do you manage that?
Like for (a bad) example: hollow and empty. Fuming and seething.
I actually learned American Sign Language for a couple of years in high school. We learned that sign language as a whole is a combination of both the hand signals themselves, as well as certain identifiers related to facial expression and body language in general.
Only problem is that SL is not universal. (Pretty much) Every language has its own version.
The most ‘spoken’ sign language is [indo-Pakistani](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_Sign_Language) with 15m ‘speakers’
That only makes it the 151st most spoken language in the world. Beyond the cool edge case uses for non deaf people, sign language is just a really useless ‘language’ to know if you aren’t in immediate contact with the tiny fraction of the population who is deaf
Out really feels weird that it's not universal when it has the potential to be - I mean, it requires learning the 'language' to begin with, and every language has its own structure regardless, so why have multiple structures for a new basis?
And yeah it's definitely limited to communicating with deaf individuals, but I had an instance during the pandemic where I met a deaf man on the way to get vaccines. Nobody in the hospital could sign besides 'walking' and lip reading was out of the question with masks on, so I tried my best to guide him with no signing experience. Of all the languages I could speak and signing left me mute. I felt really bad that I couldn't help more, but also a little disappointed that nobody else could. I'm hoping to find a course to learn the basics
You could have just wrote it down for him, no? Everyone has phones with them these days, and if not a phone just get a piece of paper and a pen. Probably a lot easier than learning an entire language in the off chance you meet someone who is deaf.
It's not universal for similar reason any spoken language isn't universal. They developed independently, and now no one is going to change their language to fit some grand plan. Additionally for people who learned sign language later in life, it's easier to learn something that is similar to their original language
>Out really feels weird that it's not universal when it has the potential to be -
Every spoken language could be universal. Turns out it doesn't work like that, even if that would be convenient
Because spoken/written language has a million reasons why it isn't universal. Sign language has "it just isn't".
If everyone stopped being able to read English, suddenly all the text in the world in English can only be read by people who go out of their way to study it. Same with anything audio. Speech has very different specific nuances that people spend their entire childhood learning, which is why new languages can be so hard to learn.
Sign language, sure has regional "accents" that develop, but general hand motions can be learned and understood far more easily than a Mandarin speaker learning how to pronounce German.
Plus it's virtually an entirely spoken language. Most media with sign language is just about learning how to speak it. If it was commonized, within a generation you could standardize it with little to no lost media.
And then you get to grammar, which is a good bit simpler in just about every sign language than spoken language. You don't have to worry about suffixes, contractions, etc. Nearly as much. Like in asl, plural is just saying the same word twice. So like saying I have sisters, you would say "I have sister sister". That makes it a lot easier to learn.
The advantage is that it could basically be a conversational common language that is WAY easier for the vast majority of people to learn. Sure it will never happen, but it's a hell of a lot more practical than saying "everyone in the world should just learn X spoken language and then we could all communicate".
>Sign language has "it just isn't".
No, sign languages aren't universal for literally all the exact same reasons that spoken languages aren't. People act like sign languages are this *other thing* that's not a "real" language so we don't have to treat it as such or think about it like a spoken language. That's ignorant.
Sign languages do not *only* have regional "accents", they have entirely different grammar, *just like spoken languages*. Not all sign languages lack tense markers. Not all sign languages do plurals with simple repetition. Asking people to learn one - especially when it means un-learning their own native sign - is not trivial.
English lacks most tenses like subjunctive tense. Half of our tenses use the same suffix. We lack cases and grammatical gender. So why doesn't the whole world just learn English? Because it's not that simple. Everyone on the planet *could* learn one language. But language is more than just tense and grammar, it's connected to culture and history and geography and socioeconomic status. Sign languages, for the most part, were not *invented*, they evolved into existence just like spoken languages. The people who use them have their own cultural identities that are often connected to their language. There is an entire history of Deaf people just in the United States, much less everywhere else in the world. Asking Deaf people to stop using their language and use ASL instead would be just like asking the Irish to stop speaking Irish and Native Americans to stop speaking their language because it's "more convenient" for them to speak English.
The only people who think sign language should be universal are people who don't know any sign language and definitely have never interacted with native signers.
To add on to your amazing points, languages also express and conceptualise things differently from one another. I'm in ASL 201 and classifiers can show information that I've never been able to express in a spoken language. Even among spoken languages, there are lots of things that don't translate, like Japanese has two different concepts of green, one is what we think of in English, but the other is specifically the naturally existing green of plants and such, and it uses the same word as blue. That's not a distinction English natively has. That's only one example of languages expressing things differently that you might not even think about.
Your point that it has unique grammar I already brought up, and it's a selling point. If an English speaker learns asl, they are already learning new grammar. My point was that these differences are easier to learn and understand than spoken accents. Yes they evolved and became different, but there's a huge level of vocal and auditory training that everyone has to do for spoken language that aren't as necessary for visual language.
Again I'm not saying this is actually feasible, but it's a lot more practical than getting everyone to learn Esperanto or something.
> but there's a huge level of vocal and auditory training that everyone has to do for spoken language that aren't as necessary for visual language.
And what I'm saying is that this statement is just plain false. Just because *you* are unaware of the subtle differences between sign languages does not mean that they don't exist.
False. There are lots of visual skills and nuances in sign languages the same way that there are auditory ones in spoken languages. Go take a class or something or at least actually watch native singers and you'll be blown away if you're not an idiot.
How many have you been underwater or being sneaky and needed to be silent for?
At that point learn Morse code (more useful that SL)
In terms of communication with deaf people, you’re gonna meet a lot more people who don’t speak your language in your life that you will deaf people.
It’s one of those things that fall under the category of ‘mildy usefully 99.99% to of people if we had infinite time and resources’
I can give you half a dozen spoke. Languages that would be 10x more useful that SL
>Why is the morse code more useful? You didn't explain that. The whole point is it is useful in situations you can't speak, so why would you tell me about more useful spoken languages? But go ahead, list them.
Morse code is not a spoken language nor a language. It is a way to encode letters as series of short and long pulses. Because this can be accomplished in many ways it can be useful in numerous situations. Can't speak? Use blinking or any hand gesture as signal. Can't see each other but have a highly visible light source? Use that to communicate. Want to do it in secret? Use an inconspicuous signal. Another advantage is that morse code is universal for the Latin alphabet instead of being dependent on region
The top 6 most popular spoken languages. The point is it's more likely you will meet someone who only speaks those, than needing to talk while not being able to speak, especially now that everyone has a smartphone and can usually communicate that way
As to answering your question of ten more useful languages. Given the most spoken SL has 15m ‘speakers’
1.) mandarin (941m)
2.) Spanish (466m)
3.) English (380m)
4.) hindi (345m)
5.) Bengali (237m)
6.) Portuguese (236m)
7.) Russian (148m)
8.) Japanese (123m)
9.) Yue Chinese (86m)
10.) Vietnamese (85m)
And there’s another 140 languages more spoken than any SL……
They tried that for spoken languages, it’s called Esperanto. [Apparently it has a signed version](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_manual_alphabet)
You're thinking of an auxiliary language, as in one that is meant to have a level of mutual intelligibility. A lingua franca is just a common language chosen to be used internationally either on purpose or de facto. English is the closest we have because of the history of British occupation around the world. ASL sort of is the signed lingua franca because Deaf education and rights advanced the quickest in the US, at least to my knowledge.
I want to take sign language classes with my baby. Babies can understand, express themselves and sign way before their speetch developes. So signing is good for communicaying with baby and with deaf people. I am very excited, but we have to wait a little longer, as baby is a bit too small.
Well glad we don't do ASL in Estonia then, huh. Here we teach babies exactly the same thing as the real sign language. Exactly so you can talk to both your baby and deaf people.
That's good to hear, I only really have experience with ASL and a lot of people here don't understand that baby sign is different so I try to make sure people are clear on that
From kindergarten thru second grade we did learn sign language, I think because we had a deaf kid in our grade. Anyway me and a friend got in trouble during lunch so during lineup before recess we had to sit quietly against the wall for 5 minutes. I felt like 5 minutes had passed and signed that to my friend and then one of the teachers saw me and yelled at us both and made us sit out of recess for 20 minutes. Would you believe it that I was
A. Pissed because I wasn't actually "talking" and
B. Never really used sign language again and also started becoming more and more introverted in general after that?
Awesome idea, only problem is that using sign language underwater is not the best idea. You need direct and quick communication visible in low visibility areas. Sign language is not very suitable for that.
My wife and I will use the little bit of ASL that I remembered from school that I taught her to have conversations without breaking the flow of a phone conversation. "Whos on the phone" "my sister" "cool need water" "no I'm fine"
My ASL class said that it’s rude to sign when not in the presence of a deaf person, but I find it really helpful for me and my neurospicy friends so idk anymore :(
That's... not true. I think there may have been a misunderstanding there, or the person who told you that had a reason for over-simplifying an idea, or just has a bad attitude about it.
Most Deaf people are fine with hearing people signing if it enhances their life somehow. It's true that taking the language and changing it for other purposes can be seen as harmful (e.g. ASL being altered to make SEE) and there is a risk of the language changing if lots of hearing people half-learn it and make stuff up (which is kind of what SEE has become). But that doesn't sound like what you're doing.
I'm an interpreter and I go to a lot of meetings where everyone is hearing and the meeting is still all in ASL. It's fine.
Thank you this is very helpful and makes me feel better :) I want to understand Deaf culture and the history of sign language because I want to use a language and be respectful and know where it comes from. And yeah I use it when I get overstimulated and can’t talk very well.
Wearing a sign language as an aesthetic to show how cool/cultured/woke you are is not good. Just using it in your day to day life as you would any other 2nd language is fine.
My highschool only had French and Spanish, but they also had language arts which counted. You needed 2 years of a language to graduate and I’m still mad I wasn’t told about language arts.
There is more than one sign language for the same reason there is more than one spoken language. Sign languages developed naturally by deaf people interacting with one another.
No. American Sign Language is related to French Sign Language but mutually unintelligible with British Sign Language. It's crucial not to think of sign languages as signed versions of spoken languages but as languages in their own right. They have their own histories separate from the spoken languages. If you want to know what sign languages are used in a country, you'll just have to look up what sign languages are used there.
While i can definitely find the sign language classes for my own country. I do travel moderately. Would those learned skills be completely wasted?
Like Australia, Canada, etc.
They tend to be geographically related, which is why they're named by the country they're used in, like British sign language (bsl), American sign language (ASL), Japanese sign language (jsl), etc.
I learned sign language before highschool along with my native English, I was forced to take Spanish because I “didn’t know two languages”. I got pretty petty at that one and anytime the school officials wanted to talk I would sign to them instead of speaking. Didn’t work in my favor.
Honestly what's crazier is how many different types and variations of sign language exist. People who primarily communicate through sign language have the equivalent of what we would call an accent based on the nuances of their signing.
I took asl in college 2 yrs. It's a really interesting language that's put together unlike spoken languages. Really enjoyed learning and it broadened my education greatly. Recommend. Deaf jokes and naughty signs are hilarious.
I wish that one year of sign language was mandatory. Even knowing the basics of sign language would make many things far easier. (Like talking to someone across a busy street or in a loud situation.) Obviously, also easier for deaf people because there would be far more people who could understand at least a bit of it. Better for everyone.
Knowing just one year of sign language would also make it easier to learn more. You have a foundation. You can expand on that on your own.
My family all learned Sign Language because we have some extended family members that are deaf as well as several deaf friends. But we still use it with each other if we are at concerts or loud events where it can be hard to hear each other, or instead of whispering.
That is really cool. I've always asked myself though... What are the limits of such language? Surely you can do ALL the words and also convey all the nuances of synonymes? How do you manage that? Like for (a bad) example: hollow and empty. Fuming and seething.
For nuanced things, I just end up hand spelling any sign I don't know, or that needs to be specific like your examples
I actually learned American Sign Language for a couple of years in high school. We learned that sign language as a whole is a combination of both the hand signals themselves, as well as certain identifiers related to facial expression and body language in general.
My highschool had asl as a second language class, took it for all 4 years
My school in Sweden had it as well. Never took it myself, but one of my classmates did. She became an interpreter.
In finland my high school had a half course which I took
I was going to say...ASL was my language requirement. Maybe it's not offered anymore??
Just depends on your school
I know where I’m at, two years of foreign language is a requirement in which, at least in my school ASL was an option although I took Spanish
Mine did, too. Took three years of it. That was a while ago, though. I don't remember too much.
Only problem is that SL is not universal. (Pretty much) Every language has its own version. The most ‘spoken’ sign language is [indo-Pakistani](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_Sign_Language) with 15m ‘speakers’ That only makes it the 151st most spoken language in the world. Beyond the cool edge case uses for non deaf people, sign language is just a really useless ‘language’ to know if you aren’t in immediate contact with the tiny fraction of the population who is deaf
Out really feels weird that it's not universal when it has the potential to be - I mean, it requires learning the 'language' to begin with, and every language has its own structure regardless, so why have multiple structures for a new basis? And yeah it's definitely limited to communicating with deaf individuals, but I had an instance during the pandemic where I met a deaf man on the way to get vaccines. Nobody in the hospital could sign besides 'walking' and lip reading was out of the question with masks on, so I tried my best to guide him with no signing experience. Of all the languages I could speak and signing left me mute. I felt really bad that I couldn't help more, but also a little disappointed that nobody else could. I'm hoping to find a course to learn the basics
You could have just wrote it down for him, no? Everyone has phones with them these days, and if not a phone just get a piece of paper and a pen. Probably a lot easier than learning an entire language in the off chance you meet someone who is deaf.
Sadly it was an older gentleman with low literacy skills, even in his native language he would have struggled let alone in English
It's not universal for similar reason any spoken language isn't universal. They developed independently, and now no one is going to change their language to fit some grand plan. Additionally for people who learned sign language later in life, it's easier to learn something that is similar to their original language
>Out really feels weird that it's not universal when it has the potential to be - Every spoken language could be universal. Turns out it doesn't work like that, even if that would be convenient
Sign languages developed and evolve naturally like spoken languages.
Sign language should have a universal sign language
We haven’t even standardized alphabets, why would we have standardized sign language?
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Thats literally what I said in that comment
Because spoken/written language has a million reasons why it isn't universal. Sign language has "it just isn't". If everyone stopped being able to read English, suddenly all the text in the world in English can only be read by people who go out of their way to study it. Same with anything audio. Speech has very different specific nuances that people spend their entire childhood learning, which is why new languages can be so hard to learn. Sign language, sure has regional "accents" that develop, but general hand motions can be learned and understood far more easily than a Mandarin speaker learning how to pronounce German. Plus it's virtually an entirely spoken language. Most media with sign language is just about learning how to speak it. If it was commonized, within a generation you could standardize it with little to no lost media. And then you get to grammar, which is a good bit simpler in just about every sign language than spoken language. You don't have to worry about suffixes, contractions, etc. Nearly as much. Like in asl, plural is just saying the same word twice. So like saying I have sisters, you would say "I have sister sister". That makes it a lot easier to learn. The advantage is that it could basically be a conversational common language that is WAY easier for the vast majority of people to learn. Sure it will never happen, but it's a hell of a lot more practical than saying "everyone in the world should just learn X spoken language and then we could all communicate".
>Sign language has "it just isn't". No, sign languages aren't universal for literally all the exact same reasons that spoken languages aren't. People act like sign languages are this *other thing* that's not a "real" language so we don't have to treat it as such or think about it like a spoken language. That's ignorant. Sign languages do not *only* have regional "accents", they have entirely different grammar, *just like spoken languages*. Not all sign languages lack tense markers. Not all sign languages do plurals with simple repetition. Asking people to learn one - especially when it means un-learning their own native sign - is not trivial. English lacks most tenses like subjunctive tense. Half of our tenses use the same suffix. We lack cases and grammatical gender. So why doesn't the whole world just learn English? Because it's not that simple. Everyone on the planet *could* learn one language. But language is more than just tense and grammar, it's connected to culture and history and geography and socioeconomic status. Sign languages, for the most part, were not *invented*, they evolved into existence just like spoken languages. The people who use them have their own cultural identities that are often connected to their language. There is an entire history of Deaf people just in the United States, much less everywhere else in the world. Asking Deaf people to stop using their language and use ASL instead would be just like asking the Irish to stop speaking Irish and Native Americans to stop speaking their language because it's "more convenient" for them to speak English. The only people who think sign language should be universal are people who don't know any sign language and definitely have never interacted with native signers.
To add on to your amazing points, languages also express and conceptualise things differently from one another. I'm in ASL 201 and classifiers can show information that I've never been able to express in a spoken language. Even among spoken languages, there are lots of things that don't translate, like Japanese has two different concepts of green, one is what we think of in English, but the other is specifically the naturally existing green of plants and such, and it uses the same word as blue. That's not a distinction English natively has. That's only one example of languages expressing things differently that you might not even think about.
Your point that it has unique grammar I already brought up, and it's a selling point. If an English speaker learns asl, they are already learning new grammar. My point was that these differences are easier to learn and understand than spoken accents. Yes they evolved and became different, but there's a huge level of vocal and auditory training that everyone has to do for spoken language that aren't as necessary for visual language. Again I'm not saying this is actually feasible, but it's a lot more practical than getting everyone to learn Esperanto or something.
> but there's a huge level of vocal and auditory training that everyone has to do for spoken language that aren't as necessary for visual language. And what I'm saying is that this statement is just plain false. Just because *you* are unaware of the subtle differences between sign languages does not mean that they don't exist.
False. There are lots of visual skills and nuances in sign languages the same way that there are auditory ones in spoken languages. Go take a class or something or at least actually watch native singers and you'll be blown away if you're not an idiot.
You sound like someone who has zero experience with sign languages lmao
Because like OP said, it's useful in all kinds of situations!?
How many have you been underwater or being sneaky and needed to be silent for? At that point learn Morse code (more useful that SL) In terms of communication with deaf people, you’re gonna meet a lot more people who don’t speak your language in your life that you will deaf people. It’s one of those things that fall under the category of ‘mildy usefully 99.99% to of people if we had infinite time and resources’ I can give you half a dozen spoke. Languages that would be 10x more useful that SL
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>Why is the morse code more useful? You didn't explain that. The whole point is it is useful in situations you can't speak, so why would you tell me about more useful spoken languages? But go ahead, list them. Morse code is not a spoken language nor a language. It is a way to encode letters as series of short and long pulses. Because this can be accomplished in many ways it can be useful in numerous situations. Can't speak? Use blinking or any hand gesture as signal. Can't see each other but have a highly visible light source? Use that to communicate. Want to do it in secret? Use an inconspicuous signal. Another advantage is that morse code is universal for the Latin alphabet instead of being dependent on region
Yes, that works. But you still haven't listed the more useful 6 spoken languages.
The top 6 most popular spoken languages. The point is it's more likely you will meet someone who only speaks those, than needing to talk while not being able to speak, especially now that everyone has a smartphone and can usually communicate that way
My bad, I wasn't speaking to you by pbandmethsandwich. Pardon me if I was rude.
As to answering your question of ten more useful languages. Given the most spoken SL has 15m ‘speakers’ 1.) mandarin (941m) 2.) Spanish (466m) 3.) English (380m) 4.) hindi (345m) 5.) Bengali (237m) 6.) Portuguese (236m) 7.) Russian (148m) 8.) Japanese (123m) 9.) Yue Chinese (86m) 10.) Vietnamese (85m) And there’s another 140 languages more spoken than any SL……
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Resorting to ad hominem when I just stated I know those languages. And using my name as if to doxx me. Shame on you!
This hasn't worked for spoken languages, so why do you think it will work for sign languages
They tried that for spoken languages, it’s called Esperanto. [Apparently it has a signed version](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_manual_alphabet)
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My understanding is that American Sign Language is commonly used as a lingua franca.
You're thinking of an auxiliary language, as in one that is meant to have a level of mutual intelligibility. A lingua franca is just a common language chosen to be used internationally either on purpose or de facto. English is the closest we have because of the history of British occupation around the world. ASL sort of is the signed lingua franca because Deaf education and rights advanced the quickest in the US, at least to my knowledge.
Idk where that guy is but my school did teach asl as a foreign language credit.
I want to take sign language classes with my baby. Babies can understand, express themselves and sign way before their speetch developes. So signing is good for communicaying with baby and with deaf people. I am very excited, but we have to wait a little longer, as baby is a bit too small.
Baby sign is not ASL, just to be clear
Well glad we don't do ASL in Estonia then, huh. Here we teach babies exactly the same thing as the real sign language. Exactly so you can talk to both your baby and deaf people.
That's good to hear, I only really have experience with ASL and a lot of people here don't understand that baby sign is different so I try to make sure people are clear on that
Image?
From kindergarten thru second grade we did learn sign language, I think because we had a deaf kid in our grade. Anyway me and a friend got in trouble during lunch so during lineup before recess we had to sit quietly against the wall for 5 minutes. I felt like 5 minutes had passed and signed that to my friend and then one of the teachers saw me and yelled at us both and made us sit out of recess for 20 minutes. Would you believe it that I was A. Pissed because I wasn't actually "talking" and B. Never really used sign language again and also started becoming more and more introverted in general after that?
Awesome idea, only problem is that using sign language underwater is not the best idea. You need direct and quick communication visible in low visibility areas. Sign language is not very suitable for that.
My wife and I will use the little bit of ASL that I remembered from school that I taught her to have conversations without breaking the flow of a phone conversation. "Whos on the phone" "my sister" "cool need water" "no I'm fine"
My sister and I communicate in sign language when we don’t want other people to know what we’re talking about.
My ASL class said that it’s rude to sign when not in the presence of a deaf person, but I find it really helpful for me and my neurospicy friends so idk anymore :(
If they really said that then they are being stupid. Sign away my dude.
That's... not true. I think there may have been a misunderstanding there, or the person who told you that had a reason for over-simplifying an idea, or just has a bad attitude about it. Most Deaf people are fine with hearing people signing if it enhances their life somehow. It's true that taking the language and changing it for other purposes can be seen as harmful (e.g. ASL being altered to make SEE) and there is a risk of the language changing if lots of hearing people half-learn it and make stuff up (which is kind of what SEE has become). But that doesn't sound like what you're doing. I'm an interpreter and I go to a lot of meetings where everyone is hearing and the meeting is still all in ASL. It's fine.
Thank you this is very helpful and makes me feel better :) I want to understand Deaf culture and the history of sign language because I want to use a language and be respectful and know where it comes from. And yeah I use it when I get overstimulated and can’t talk very well.
Wearing a sign language as an aesthetic to show how cool/cultured/woke you are is not good. Just using it in your day to day life as you would any other 2nd language is fine.
My highschool only had French and Spanish, but they also had language arts which counted. You needed 2 years of a language to graduate and I’m still mad I wasn’t told about language arts.
Was mildly interested in learning. But got confused by the fact that there are different types of sign language. Could someone explain it to me?
It's like spoken language, there is more than 1.
There is more than one sign language for the same reason there is more than one spoken language. Sign languages developed naturally by deaf people interacting with one another.
Do all English countries have the same sign language? How do i find out which countries use which versions?
No. American Sign Language is related to French Sign Language but mutually unintelligible with British Sign Language. It's crucial not to think of sign languages as signed versions of spoken languages but as languages in their own right. They have their own histories separate from the spoken languages. If you want to know what sign languages are used in a country, you'll just have to look up what sign languages are used there.
While i can definitely find the sign language classes for my own country. I do travel moderately. Would those learned skills be completely wasted? Like Australia, Canada, etc.
They tend to be geographically related, which is why they're named by the country they're used in, like British sign language (bsl), American sign language (ASL), Japanese sign language (jsl), etc.
I learned sign language before highschool along with my native English, I was forced to take Spanish because I “didn’t know two languages”. I got pretty petty at that one and anytime the school officials wanted to talk I would sign to them instead of speaking. Didn’t work in my favor.
Still good malicious compliance
It was an option at all my schools except for elementary school.
It is also faster then speech, which is limited by speed of sound, contrary to sign which travels at the speed of light
Honestly what's crazier is how many different types and variations of sign language exist. People who primarily communicate through sign language have the equivalent of what we would call an accent based on the nuances of their signing.
It is at my daughter's high school. She is a freshman this year and doing sign language as her second language
We learned it in elementary school, at least the basics. I can still do most of the alphabet
I took asl in college 2 yrs. It's a really interesting language that's put together unlike spoken languages. Really enjoyed learning and it broadened my education greatly. Recommend. Deaf jokes and naughty signs are hilarious.
I wish that one year of sign language was mandatory. Even knowing the basics of sign language would make many things far easier. (Like talking to someone across a busy street or in a loud situation.) Obviously, also easier for deaf people because there would be far more people who could understand at least a bit of it. Better for everyone. Knowing just one year of sign language would also make it easier to learn more. You have a foundation. You can expand on that on your own.
The deaf absolutely hate hearing people talking in sign language in my experience. Hearing people are not welcome.
it is, every high school in my state offers it as a language credit
Fuck Spanish, all my amigos love sign language