# Hearing characters who know sign langauge?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hearing-characters-who-know-sign-langauge/744916>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [February 2, 2016, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hearing-characters-who-know-sign-langauge/744916 "2016-02-02T03:28:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2016, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hearing-characters-who-know-sign-langauge/744916/41 "2016-02-06T00:34:05Z")

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> [@Achren](#):
>
> Right, but it’s like most times a show uses a foreign language - not being fluent, I wonder how much they’ve gotten right or wrong that someone who _is_ fluent would notice.

> [@MrAtoz](#):
>
> Yeah, Data explicitly learned sign language in that episode, for that purpose–which, being Data, he was able to do very quickly.
> 
> The Doctor (of _Doctor Who_) _thinks_ he knows sign language, but it turns out he doesn’t.

And I remember specifically reading that Spiner was not very good at it–mostly due to how little time he head to learn it, since it was basically added at the last minute by suggestion from the Riva actor himself. (Originally, they had him actually learn to speak using a computer.)

Unfortunately, I can’t find what I read (from someone who actually understood that particular sign language) to give you more details.

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