# Ask the Deaf Person **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 19, 2005, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602 "2005-05-19T16:52:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/41 "2005-05-20T06:42:02Z")
> [@Wasafiri](#): > > Reading lips is HARD. IIRC only 2% of deaf people can read lips. It’s not as easy as many suppose it is. To what extent does ASL contain lip movements? LSQ (Langue des signes québécoise) contains quite a lot of lip movements, I’ve been given to understand, and when I see people signing around here they move their mouths a great deal. ---
**Author:** ![TJdude825](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@TJdude825](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TJdude825)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/42 "2005-05-20T07:05:44Z")
> [@Wasafiri](#): > > Oh, there is definitely sign language slang. For sure. Now I’m curious. Could you explain how to do slang signs and what they mean? ---
**Author:** ![TJdude825](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@TJdude825](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TJdude825)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/43 "2005-05-20T07:08:54Z")
Oh, and… why is this in GD? Were you hoping to debate something? If so, could you clarify that? If not… mods will be along shortly, unless I’m missing something. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/44 "2005-05-20T12:37:12Z")
> [@Wasafiri](#): > > Oh, we definitely enjoy music. Our tactile sense is just as important as our sight. It’s rather easy to feel the difference between bass sounds and treble sounds (easier than it is with my cochlear implant, I have to say). > > Before my cochlear implant, I went to see Santana, CSNY, Billy Joel, Elton John. Santana and CSNY I enjoyed, Billy Joel and Elton John I only went because I got a cute girl to come with me. > > I’m not sure how to describe the sensation. But I’d wager you could get a good feel (no pun intended) for it by putting in earplugs and curling up on the floor next to a powerful subwoofer. This is a great thread. Thanks! One more quick question. Do you have a stereo? Do you buy records? ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/45 "2005-05-20T12:38:27Z")
The reason I ask is that I’m wondering if the visual portion of a concert “helps” you enjoy it more, and maybe you wouldn’t get as much out of it through solely electronic means. ---
**Author:** ![Omega\_Glory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7c8e57/32.png) [@Omega\_Glory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omega_Glory)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/46 "2005-05-20T12:51:14Z")
I can’t speak for **Wasafiri** , but my college has a large deaf population, and a lot of them definitely owned stereos and cds. ---
**Author:** ![Wasafiri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/59ef9b/32.png) [@Wasafiri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wasafiri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/47 "2005-05-20T14:38:02Z")
> [@Kevbo](#): > > Probably TMI, but here goes, > > When I see a cute girl signing, or hear the distinctive accent of the speaking deaf, I find it strongly attractive… in the same exotic way a french accent would be. > > I realize your a guy, so may not know, but are “deafaphiles” like me common, and do deaf women make jokes about us? Nah on both counts. ---
**Author:** ![Wasafiri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/59ef9b/32.png) [@Wasafiri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wasafiri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/48 "2005-05-20T14:40:20Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Are there signing dialects? For example, if someone is signing ASL, can you tell what part of the country they’re from? And are there ethnic dialects as well? There are definitely signing dialects. Signs for common words will differ between the West, Northeast, the South, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Wasafiri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/59ef9b/32.png) [@Wasafiri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wasafiri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/49 "2005-05-20T14:45:06Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > My WAG would be that while you now have the chochlea to “hear”, your neurons aren’t organizing the sound in a meaningful way in your brain. You are definitely right there. ---
**Author:** ![Wasafiri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/59ef9b/32.png) [@Wasafiri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wasafiri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/50 "2005-05-20T14:47:35Z")
> [@Anne Neville](#): > > Is the middle finger really ASL (or sign language in some other system) for some curse word? Yes. It’s a universal sign. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Wasafiri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/59ef9b/32.png) [@Wasafiri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wasafiri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/51 "2005-05-20T14:48:41Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > This is a great thread. Thanks! One more quick question. Do you have a stereo? Do you buy records? Yes, but I don’t buy records. Not worth the investment for me. Movies, on the other hand–now there’s a good investment. ---
**Author:** ![Wasafiri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/59ef9b/32.png) [@Wasafiri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wasafiri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/52 "2005-05-20T14:50:03Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > To what extent does ASL contain lip movements? LSQ (Langue des signes québécoise) contains quite a lot of lip movements, I’ve been given to understand, and when I see people signing around here they move their mouths a great deal. I haven’t met a deaf person who keeps their mouth closed when signing. But then again, the lip movements they make may be totally unrelated to what they are saying. More like facial expressions, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Wasafiri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/59ef9b/32.png) [@Wasafiri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wasafiri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/53 "2005-05-20T14:51:17Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > The reason I ask is that I’m wondering if the visual portion of a concert “helps” you enjoy it more, and maybe you wouldn’t get as much out of it through solely electronic means. Yes, just like feeling my computer play music can be greatly enhanced by having a visualization running on the monitor. The Santana concert I went to had a giant screen with a visualization running. It was very sweet. ---
**Author:** ![Aurorah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Aurorah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aurorah)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/54 "2005-05-20T15:21:32Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yes, but initialized signs are usually for synonyms of the commonly used ASL sign. True, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to automatically be clear what they’re saying to a predominantly-ASL sign user. Initialized signs, to the ASL user, are extremely distracting and often require extra “processing” time to understand if they’re not often seen. > [@](#): > > As I’m sure you know, ASL has a sign “big”. But it also includes pretty much all english synonyms for “big”…an ASL translator would use “big” when interpreting for someone who said “huge”, “gigantic”, “enormous”, etc etc. ASL doesn’t have the same library of synomymous worlds with subtle gradiations of meaning that english does. But of course ASL can convey subtle gradiations of meaning in other ways…by size, placement, speed, repitition, etc of the signs. It’s obvious you know what you’re talking about, so this is edging towards the nitpicky zone. As a sign language interpreter, just signing “big” for “huge”, “gigantic”, and “enormous” CAN BE true, but largely isn’t. As a beginning interpreter, it’s possible that I would have signed just that, but there are so many more factors involved to interpreting. A hearing person saying: “I have a HUGE craving for cheesecake” will absolutely not result in me signing, “BIG CRAVE CHEESECAKE ME!” Even if they are referring to size, “Did you see how enormous that bug was?” will not result in “BUG BIG! SEE FINISH?” The variations for ASL include facial expression, mouth movement, classifier usage, etc. SEE doesn’t rely on that _at all_. SEE relies on manually coded aspects of the English language to communicate those slight variations and differences. I truly believe it is this glaring diference that makes ASL “beautiful” and SEE, well, manually coded English. > [@](#): > > Of course you can do the same thing with SEE, but you can also declare that the ASL “big” sign with an “e” handshape means exactly “enormous”, with “g” it means exactly “gigantic”, with “h” it means exactly “huge”. Now, I understand that SEE uses this, and to be honest, it pains me to see this kind of signing done. Not only because I don’t understand it, but it will derail my interpreting abilities. That said, I am an ASL (or PSE) - English / English - ASL (or PSE) interpreter, and I have not been trained to understand SEE signs. That’s kind of why I’m nitpicky on this topic, though. There’s such a huge difference between what’s being signed from an ASL or PSE user than a SEE signer that just saying it’s a synonym of an ASL sign isn’t complete. Yes, it is a synonym in the strictest sense of the definition, but it’s not saying enough about the difference between the two types of signs. > [@](#): > > If you’re talking with a baby you’d just use “big”, whether you’re talking or signing or both. I guess it depends on who’s doing the baby sign. Yeah, from a general consumer view, you’re absolutely right. I have to remove myself from my profession, though, to be able to see that. Deaf people I’ve seen with their babies sign normally to them, even at a few months old, just as I speak normally to my baby using grammatically correct English. I suspect I’ll sign appropriately-structured ASL and conceptually-accurate signs (ie, NOT initialized signs) to my baby even though that’s not what the general population does. Again, I do see that has to do with my profession and intimacy with the language and most people who are using baby sign don’t have quite the anal retentiveness about it that I do. 😉 > [@](#): > > Initializing, adding verb endings and plurals may seem like a big difference, but it doesn’t seem…glaring…to me. It really is. It takes me from a smooth-talking, fluid-sounding interpreter to a choppy, basic-word-choosing, unprofessional one. And that’s not because SEE doesn’t have the capability of sounding professional and smooth, but because the little differences like the initializing, plural-adding, ing-adding is so disruptive in ASL. ---
**Author:** ![Aurorah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Aurorah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aurorah)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/55 "2005-05-20T15:25:06Z")
> [@Omega Glory](#): > > I can’t speak for **Wasafiri** , but my college has a large deaf population, and a lot of them definitely owned stereos and cds. To add - when I was in college and learning sign language, the “deaf parties” were the ones invariably getting shut down by cops. Every party. Shut down due to the noise. And it was always a huge joke with them. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/56 "2005-05-20T17:41:12Z")
When people find out that you are deaf Do you ever get this!? ---
**Author:** ![Wasafiri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/59ef9b/32.png) [@Wasafiri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wasafiri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/57 "2005-05-20T18:00:18Z")
> [@NurseCarmen](#): > > When people find out that you are deaf Do you ever get this!? More than I would like, actually–it accomplishes nothing but making them harder to understand. ---
**Author:** ![charolem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@charolem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/charolem)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/58 "2005-05-20T18:34:17Z")
> [@Wasafiri](#): > > (1) You are correct, what is known as American Sign Language (ASL) got its roots out of a collaboration between Thomas Gallaudet, an hearing American, and Laurent Clerc, a deaf Frenchman. Many deaf people will strenuously object to this, but Gallaudet and Clerc created a language which closely followed the rules of English grammar, with all the requisite verb endings and prepositions, called “old signed English.” Gallaudet and Clerc opened their school in Connecticut, and developed a sign language that combined many of the aspects Clerc brought from France along with the signs that had been established by what was referred to, at the time, as “Island Sign.” Island Sign originated on Martha’s Vineyard, where a large percentage of the population was deaf. The two men also incorporated the use of the manual alphabet that Bell had been using. > [@Wasafiri](#): > > American Sign Language, on the other hand, is less of a strict interpretation of written and spoken English than it is an expression of concepts. In ASL, there are no expression of articles, prepositions, or conjunctions. “I am going to the store” becomes “I go store I.” Gallaudet’s students, prior to him exposing them to Old Signed English, already possessed a natural form of sign language, which forms the fundamentals for the modern-day ASL. Oops! I think Wasafiri meant gerunds rather than conjunctions. 😉 BTW, I was an educational interpreter for some 10 years and now freelance occassionally. charolem ---
**Author:** ![charolem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@charolem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/charolem)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/59 "2005-05-20T18:39:02Z")
[QUOTE=Wasafiri] **jsgoddess** – I recently got a cochlear implant at age 23, and the experience of “hearing” did not come as a complete surprise to me. However, I’m still trying to figure out where all these godforsaken noises come from… ;j[/QUOTE Those godforsaken noises are the noises of the world, welcome to our cacophany. Charolem ---
**Author:** ![charolem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@charolem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/charolem)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2005, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602/60 "2005-05-20T18:52:02Z")
> [@Wasafiri](#): > > Yes, you are exactly right in saying that SEE follows the rules of English grammar, with all the requisite verb endings and prepositions. SEE has signs for gerunds, and the word “the” for instance, where ASL has no use for such English language components. > > But this is not a recent invention. Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc modified “old signed French” into “old signed English” to do precisely this. Gallaudet and Clerc invented “affix signs,” as you put it, so that it was possible to faithfully render the English language through signs. Wasafiri is correct. Gallaudet was motivated by a neighbor’s daughter. The young girl was deaf and wasn’t able to attend school or socialize with others. Gallaudet took a sabbatical from his religious post to study sign language in europe in order to come back and help this young girl begin to communicated with those around her and gain an education. After studying sign language in Britain, Germany and finally France, Gallaudet’s idea was create a way for the deaf to sign English. The intent was not to make a language that would further restrict the mainstreaming of the deaf into the whole of society. Gallaudet wanted to ensure their ability to be educated and vital citizens. IMHO, this has been lost – and to the detriment of many of our deaf children and adults. Charolem [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-deaf-person/304602.md?page=4)