After learning Chinese and Spanish, two written and oral languages, I decided to try something completely new. I wanted to try a language that couldn't be written or read, or really orally spoken. That language is sign language.
Sign language had always fascinated me. I remember seeing two people at a park communicating with each other by moving their hands in certain shapes and creating different facial expressions. How cool is it that you can understand another person without even saying a word!, I thought. I looked down at my own hands and realized the power they held-that even my hands can become a dictionary able to create thousands of words and phrases. So that's kind of like the back story to how I got interested in ASL.
The first lesson that I took was from Bill Vicars: https://www.youtube.com/user/billvicars
and I automatically fell in love with the language and eagerly wanted to learn more.
Now I'm on lesson 12, and so far here are a few things I've discovered and the impacts it has had on my life so far:
Note: All images come from Pixabay. No need to sue me!
1) Learning ASL teaches you to be more observant
This one would sound like a no brainer, as ASL is a language that primarily uses your visual senses rather than auditory ones to understand what is being spoken. One blink and you could miss a whole word or letter when fingerspelling. Eye contact is key.
Interestingly, just as I've found understanding fast native Spanish speakers talking, a challenge I've come across with ASL is with fingerspelling. Their fingers simply fly away like a pianist on the keyboard playing flight of the bumblebee at 5 times speed. Let's not even mention trying to make my own fingers go that fast!
Despite the challenge, I found that the more I practiced, the more I was able to simultaneously train my brain to identify the shapes of the hand and form them into words, the same process I kind of used to take apart Spanish words when native speakers tend to slur them together.
ASL also requires a lot of body language and facial expressions. Lowered eyebrows, for example, means the person is asking you a "wh-" question. You might not even need to use the sign "I'm sad" to convey your emotions because your face would have already told so.
In a sense, I found that carrying this to real life, it makes me understand others' emotions more clearly and notice the small details. Just yesterday, for example, I re-watched a movie and in one of the scenes, while the father was playing with his daughter, he looked kind of concerned and turned to look at his wife in the far background coughing, foreshadowing that she was sick. I hadn't noticed this before, rather, I was just focused on the child in the foreground who was playing with her toys, so it was really cool seeing it in a new way.
In the hearing world, we can all admit that in normal conversations, we sometimes passively listen rather than to focus on the individual. Perhaps there is too many things in our lives to focus, like what we will eat later or what is taking up our time. But ASL causes you to pay attention to what is being said, and this is all a lesson that we can learn.
There's also significant research that supports that ASL develops your spatial reasoning:
2) Being more expressive
Just watch this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HS5AtEk8DU)
and I think you'll understand what I mean when I say that ASL is a very expressive language
It's quite unique to see covers of songs when the creator has to both sign the lyrics and effectively convey the beat/mood of the song. Like watching stories or poetry being performed, sign language reflects art. Even with a voice, the signs become a voice of their own.
In sign language, there aren't a lot of words you'd find in other ones, like "very" or "really". Instead, you have to intensify your body language to express these words. With this practice, I find it easier to not only to be more observant of body language but to use it more effectively myself even in normal conversations.
Note: I recently found out that Italian is also a language that heavily incorporates hand gestures in the languages as well
3) Understanding Deaf Culture
"One of the benefits of being bi-cultural is simply the awareness that how you live is not the only way"- Ann Campanella
Just like any other language, with ASL comes a unique and beautiful culture that I had not been previously aware of.
I think much more awareness needs to be brought to this culture because there are a lot of misconceptions about the deaf community. I recently watched Ellen and Ryan's video where they shared some challenges being in a deaf and hearing relationship and how others perceive them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPdmV3DZ9nE)
Deafness isn't a disability, nor a disadvantage. It is an opportunity to interpret and communicate with the world in a different way. Yet, the challenges they face day-to-day include not only communicating with the hearing world but battling against the prejudices.
We need to realize that losing the ability to hear is not losing identity, intelligence, self-worth, and being a “human”. As Marlee Matlin states, “Deaf people can do anything, except hear”. Inclusivity is the key for us to progress forward and appreciate each other’s differences.
ASL has become an important bridge for not only this community to connect with us, but most importantly, for us to connect to them.
In the future, I definitely hope to meet up at a deaf community center and practice my skills but as for now, I’m just hoping everyone is safe.
4) ASL teaches you patience
For those who thought that ASL is an easy language, think again.
I like to compare ASL with a thought I had when I was little. I wanted to play the cello instead of the piano because it would be easier since the cello only had 4 strings while the piano had 87 keys. Years later into cello, I figured that it was no easy feat and if anything, harder than the piano. That was because it only had 4 strings, there was so much to pay attention to-like tone, intonation, and how each centimeter of the string would produce a different sound and could determine whether you were in tune or not.
In the same way, because ASL can't be written, spoken, or heard, it provides a unique challenge. For starters, just like Chinese, each word has its own shape, so there is A LOT of vocabulary to memorize. But just like PinYin in Chinese, you could, of course, finger spell the word out in a very inefficient manner. Therefore, a lot of patience is needed to learn each sign, and even after, a lot of repetitive practice is necessary to retain it in your memory.
Though there are many days that I feel discouraged after forgetting what I had just learned the day before, this process has taught me a lot about embracing the moments and keeping my eyes on the end goal. As corny as it sounds, the best things truly just take time.
That being said, I don't want to discourage you from learning the language. Once you get a hold of the basics, learning vocabulary comes easy (see some examples below), and if you think about it, we already use some form of sign language in our daily conversations.
5) Enjoyment
Finally, ASL is such a fun language to study! If you were younger and used to make up a "secret code" with your siblings and friends so that no one could understand you but yourselves, now, you can actually learn one with your hands!
This language comes with so many little surprises and there's actually a lot of patterns if you pay close attention. For example, the sign for most "specialized people/occupation", like a teacher, interpreter, dentist, is made of two parts: 1 of which is the actual sign that demonstrates what the person does, and the other where you move both your hands down vertically as if shaping the sides of a box (haha does this even make sense) and this represents the general idea of a "person"
Also, the signs themselves reflect what they represent, so it really isn't too hard to remember the vocabulary. Here are some examples below: (this isn't me by the way, it's a gif I found)
Learning ASL grammar has also been a fun ride (yes this language has its own grammar rules, it's not just English with hand gestures). Though there aren't filler words like "are, was, for, the...', there is still a logical order of words that make its grammar distinct from that of English. ASL establishes a Time-subject-verb order (like Chinese) or a time-verb-subject. Another sentence structure is called "topicalization", where you identify the topic or subject first, and then the descriptions that follow, like "my ball? It's green".
There is so much more I could go into this, but just from these few examples, it becomes evident that ASL has a unique style of structuring sentences.
At the end of the day, if you're looking for a new language to learn, try out sign language! There are different types of sign language as well (British Sign Language, ASL, etc), so you have a variety of choices.
Best of luck to you and make sure you like and comment! I would love to hear any stories you might have learning sign language. If you want to be notified the moment I post because my blog has quite a random schedule, please subscribe to my newsletter!