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.
Now I’m curious. Could you explain how to do slang signs and what they mean?
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.
This is a great thread. Thanks! One more quick question. Do you have a stereo? Do you buy records?
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.
I can’t speak for Wasafiri, but my college has a large deaf population, and a lot of them definitely owned stereos and cds.
Nah on both counts.
There are definitely signing dialects. Signs for common words will differ between the West, Northeast, the South, etc.
You are definitely right there.
Yes. It’s a universal sign. 
Yes, but I don’t buy records. Not worth the investment for me. Movies, on the other hand–now there’s a good investment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oops! I think Wasafiri meant gerunds rather than conjunctions.
BTW, I was an educational interpreter for some 10 years and now freelance occassionally.
charolem
[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
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