Cecil, I have worked with Deaf and hearing-impaired all my life and I was rather impressed by your comments. (I didn’t expect that!) The response you gave was more on thought and conversation that what language to think in, which is a rather mut point. I too have been caught signing in my sleep. I think that is no different than people who talk out loud in their sleep. ASL is a very difficult and complex language and is concidered a foreign language of it’s own. I signed with my daughter and at 9 months she was telling me rudamentary sing and 10 months she could tell me she wanted milk or juice.
I also wanted to comment on the brain research that you stated. It is a scientific fact that sign language, a visual language, is a right brain function. According to some research this is why autistic children are able to learn sign when trying to learn language.
There are actually many books written on this subject and I would recommend reading some that are written by Deaf people to learn more.
Actually it is NOT easy for Deaf people to grasp written English easily. Like Cecil has said, Sign Language (ASL) is structurally completely different from English and is actually closer to Chinese (imagine a hand-body-language version of Chinese if you will).
Basically you would teach a Deaf person written English the same way you would teach a native Chinese speaker how to speak English. Many Deaf people never learn to write fluent English and this is often mistakenly thought to correspond with level of intelligence.
Of course, every individual is different. Not all Deaf are created equal - It is fallacy to assume “Deaf” means can not hear anything. Truly profound-level Deaf people accounts for a very small percentage of the “Deaf” population in general. Most Deaf people have some level of residual hearing and there is a high correspondence between English writing skills and residual hearing level - although again this also depends on the individual, his/her upbringing, kind of education received, and so on.
Bottom line here is that many Deaf people do think in sign language, although this would be a small percentage of Deaf people. Most Deaf people think in English simply because that was the way they were raised.
I’d just like to throw in that I think Cecil is ‘not quite correct’ on this one.
It seems common sense to me that thought and language are independent of eachother. Language is simply the outward articulation of thought.
Ideas do not come soley in the form of words - thats why they are called ‘ideas’ 
Nitpick: Cecil said ASL is like Chinese in that it is highly inflected. I think this is incorrect. Inflection means the use of affixes to create grammatical meaning (like verb conjucation: walk, walks, walked). Chinese does this extremely rarely (English does it quite rarely as well), and I imagine ASL does it even less. I can’t imagine how it would be done, but I know almost nothing about ASL.
So what does Cecil mean by an “inflected gesture”? Is it “tone,” maybe graceful versus choppy movements?
substatique if you were to inflect your voice, you could change its tone, as you mentioned, and its pitch, and the forcefullness and softness with which you speak.
You can juxtapose that with sign language. I don’t know about ‘choppy’ movements - I don’t like to imagine deaf people doing the robot while signing - but just the forcefullness and emotion behind their signs 
Unfortunately, the English word “inflect” has two completely different meanings in the language department. In the sense of conjugation and declension, as found in most of the IE family, neither Chinese nor ASL (nor any other sign) is inflected. But in the sense of variation of tone, Chinese is highly inflected, and so (though, obviously, only by analogy) is sign.
The history of sign in the article is a bit oversimplified. ASL is based partly on locally evolved Colonial Sign, but that was a rather crude language, because the Colonies had no organized deaf community. ASL’s main ancestor is French Sign, because Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, founder of education for the deaf in the US, and developer of ASL, was offered aid only on impossible terms by the leading school in England, so he traveled to France, instead.
I don’t know whether or not Chinese is highly inflected or not (I most certainly don’t know Chinese), but ASL most definitely is. A slight change in the way a sign is made can change the meaning completely. Remember, ASL is not just movement of hands… it is a whole body language including facial expressions and body motion. He did say that a slight change in a chinese character (on paper) can totally change the meaning of the word or phrase that the character represents. I am sure this is what Cecil meant by “inflection” (paper version rather than tonal version).
Ha ha ha. That painted a really funny picture in my head - various family members of mine doing the robot while talking. 
But really, let me give an example of an inflection changing what a sign means. I am sure you all know the “thumbs up” sign. Give your monitor a thumb up with one hand. You just told it “good”. Now give your thumb a slight wiggle. You just said “ten”.
Note: The thumbs up sign is not the regular way to say “good” in ASL. It is one way. I was just using it as an example of how slightly changing the sign makes it mean something totally different.
That is correct, and he brought FSL (french sign language) over to the USA and that is where ASL comes from. Mind you, a native ASL person today would have a very hard time understanding a native FSL speaker.
But it is even more difficult for a native ASL speaker to understand a native BSL (british sign language) speaker. This is funny in a sense since both countries use the same written and spoken language (English obviously) but the sign language of both countries are completely different. This surprises many people.
I do take issue with THG being “developer of ASL” - he really only planted the seeds for it. ASL developed as a language entirely on its own.
Well, we could run around in circles on that forever. “Only planted the seeds” seems too little, considering the vital role he played.
But as a hearing person, naturally he could only take it so far; then his students had to pick up the burden.
(I, myself, am hearing, and, in fact, I’ve never really met even one profoundly deaf person in my entire life. The only reason that I know anything at all about ASL is that my involvement in theater has brought me into contact from time to time with professional signers.)
As a Deaf person myself, I just can’t help but feel the need to reply to some of these posts ;).
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Gallaudet - In order to help a neighbor’s daughter be able to communicate with her family, he sailed over to France to look for help. Laurent Clerc, a french signer, sailed back with him, teaching him sign on the voyage over. Upon return, they established schools to teach sign - Not just deaf children, but people of like minds with Gallaudet, who would then move to other places and do their best to spread it. Incidentally, France later banned sign language, and when it was revived, it was imported from Germany, if I recall correctly (Hey, I’m not Cecil, I don’t know everything)
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Inflection is sign language is not the difference between “good” and “10”, but the use of facial expression, body position, even slightly different hand shapes or a shake of the head, to change a concept’s (There are no real ‘words’ in sign) target or strength. Take, for example, the word “dislike”. sign it in a persons direction, you dislike them. ‘throw’ the sign at them, you really hate them. Angle your arms upward, you’re talking about an event - the translation changes from dislike/hate to awful/horrible. Even the sign for “10” can be modified to make it seem like not enough, too much, an approximation, a good or bad amount, etc.
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Intelligence. I do believe we need language to effectively learn. I do NOT believe that ASL is inherently inferior to English. In my opinion, ASL is a vastly superior language for interpersonal communication (face-to-face, not written text). Alas, it is a common view, even in my college where there’s thousands of deaf students, that the inability to write good english demonstrates poor intelligence or learning capability. Like Cecil said, it’s a much bigger breach to cross than learning Russian when you’re a native English speaker. Unfortunately, the spoken world is the one that we have to live in, day in and day out, so those who don’t learn to communicate in english (spoken or written) invariably suffer in more ways than one. They may be the most brilliant person who ever lived, but when people their entire life say, “You’re not good enough”, “Go back to your room until you can write that paragraph in good english”, “No no, not ethhh … esss!” to you, it really does wear one’s own view of their intelligence down.
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How do I think? I rarely think conciously - even when writing this, I just write it word by word, I don’t even know until I write the word down what I’m writing. The same applies to sign, or software programming (I’m a developer). When I dream, it is in ESP, unless sign or voice is somehow the point of the dream.
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Signers doing the Robot. If you think this is funny, try a joke that’s been going around me and my friends for years, based off a larp (A game where you’re given a character to act out in person and a goal to achieve) - Signing Ninjas. When fighting, every other word bashes the bad guy.
For the record - I was deafened at the age of 2, I wear a hearing aid - but all it tells me is that there’s noise. I can’t decipher words. Last time I used a phone, 7 years ago, it took me 15 minutes to figure out it was my mother calling. Another 20 to figure out she wanted her car battery jumped. Without lipreading, I’m even worse in person. Yet, I can speak English almost fluently - I may mispronounce the most mundane words, I have problems with syllable inflection and volume control, but I can speak well enough to make myself understood. And if that fails, there’s always writing.
Wow, I’m wordy tonight.
Hello, Deafwalker! I hope not to offend you with my response; there are some folks who are deaf who get a leetle upset when deafness is compared with autism. However, as a person with high-functioning autism (Asperger’s Syndrome, to be more precise), I notice that there is common ground between us that in terms of how the educational system treats people.
Deafwalker wrote:
I have seen a lot of this. I work with teachers and families of autistic kids, and there are a lot of kids who are really bright but who can’t make the jump from symbols (pictures, PECS, or ASL) to “real” language. Often they can learn to read but not to produce “good” sentences.
Of course, autism is different than deafness in that autism is much more often accompanied by some level of retardation, but a large number of us (autistic folks) are pretty bright. Non-visual language can be a terrible stumbling block for otherwise bright people who can do great things in terms of sculpting or using tools like CAD but can’t come up with decent English sentences.
**Deafwalker again:[/q]
This really interests me. You say you just hear noise – any differentiation between types of noise? In other words, if there were no visual/social cues that told you what you were hearing was a voice, would you pick up on that fact?
Sorry if I am too nosy – what we call “sensory issues” are common in autism, and I have them myself. I’m lucky: my hearing only goes wonky occasionally. When it does, I have to strain to listen to the sound of each word coming at me, then think about the sound until I can identify the word’s meaning, then try to put the memorized sounds together to make a sentence. I can parse a 5-word sentences in about 15 seconds this way if I’m totally focused.
Nonetheless, there are folks on the “autism spectrum” who have normal hearing but who can’t hear language – it’s just sound to them, and can’t be parsed into meaning. I figure I’d never be able to parse sentences when I have one of my “wonky” moments if I didn’t already speak/hear English fluently.
It’s odd, but speaking and “hearing” a language are actually two entirely different skills.
There is indeed a vast difference between visual and auditory language, which is quite unfortunate. I’m no expert on autistics, but quite a few are extremely intelligent in some area. “Idiot Savant,” is the term I think most people apply to it. But to really get to know people - Autistic, Deaf, Hearing or otherwise, you can’t force them into your own mode of communication, and label them when they fail that. Perhaps extreme autism could be compared to those Deaf who grew up in a pure ASL world trying to learn English - Even I have a hard time understanding their sentences.
Quote: (I suck at Web-based BB systems, so this is just cut+paste)
It’s odd, but speaking and “hearing” a language are actually two entirely different skills.
Very true. I know several deaf people who can speak fairly well. At age 18, or older, they received Cochlear Implants; and are now “rated” at the same hearing level as most hearing people. Yet they still can’t understand spoken language - the brain just doesn’t know how. So they don’t only have ‘speech therapy’ to improve their speaking with their new hearing; they also have ‘listen therapy’.
Quote 2:
This really interests me. You say you just hear noise – any differentiation between types of noise? In other words, if there were no visual/social cues that told you what you were hearing was a voice, would you pick up on that fact?
Voices are impossible for me - soprano or alto, they’re all in a close auditory range that makes them indecipherable for me. If I’m in a quiet room, and somebody says something loudly, and I’m wearing my hearing aid; I might be able to tell that somebody said something. But not what. Most of the time, I don’t even notice - voices just blend into the background noise that most people’s brains filter out and they don’t even know is there. I primarily use it as an aid for lipreading, but it still requires a quiet room for me to do so effectively. I can lipread without it, but it does help.
Most of the time, my hearing works like this, to use recent examples:
I put on my hearing aid in the morning and heard a low thrum. At first, I thought it was the kitchen fan, so I went to the kitchen, but the fan over the stove was off. So then I checked my computer, placing a hand on it to feel for vibrations. - Nope, it’s running fine. Heater’s not on, too. Neither is the TV. I give up and go into the bathroom. It’s a lot louder there. I check the shower, sink, and toilet - nothing’s running. My conclusion: A neighbor must be taking a shower.
There was also this time when I was waiting for a UPS delivery. I don’t yet have a flasher installed on my doorbell, so I have to keep my hearing aid on all day and listen for it. Unfortunately, it was also the same day that the apartment maintenance guys went from apartment to apartment checking fire alarms. I got quite a lot of exercise that day.
On the other hand, and this is rare - If it’s VERY quiet, and I mean VERY, the hearing aid does pick up things nobody else can hear. Once I was playing a game and looked out the window. My brother asked me what I was looking for, I said “A Police car. I hear sirens.” He laughed and said he didn’t hear anything. A few minutes later, it came into earshot for him.
Do you people go around talking in your heads all the time? I generally think in concepts, not words.
OFF TOPIC…
What type of hearing aids do you wear? Mine are the best fully digital type possible (I couldn’t afford them but the great state of Arizona pays for it). Those are really nice - 7 separate bands and it automatically turns background noise way down and does the filtering for you.
Hello, again, Deafwalker!
Thank you so much for your response; it’s really interesting and gives me a lot to think about. I hope to have time to reply in full soon. This is just a response note on one item:
Actually, savantism is a relatively rare occurence in autism. I’m talking about autistic people, like myself, who have good general intelligence but who unlike myself have great difficulty expressing themselves through non-visual language.
“Auties” who think purely in pictures (visual thinking) often have a hard time with language. Visual thinking is often very concrete, where language is by its nature abstract.
A person who thinks visually will usually have specific images for specific words. “Dog” doesn’t mean a general concept of a dog, it means a specific mental picture or set of mental pictures of dogs. The generalized concept isn’t stored, the concrete pictures are.
However, visual thinkers can often manipulate images in their minds to the extent that they can fully imagine a blueprint or mechanical drawing before they even put pencil to paper. They might be able to construct massive and complex circuit diagrams in their heads without recourse to written notes or any use of language.
Hence, my above comments objecting to the idea that “sophisticated human thought” requires language. Sophisticated human communication requires language; thought doesn’t.
mherbold:
The great state of Arizona also paid for mine =). I’m a Flagstaff native, but attending RIT in Rochester, NY. It’s all blech here, can’t wait to go back southwest.
My hearing aids are analog. Way back when I got my most current set, they told me that digitial hearing aids were available, but as yet not strong enough for my amount of loss; though that was way back in the '90s, perhaps there’s something available for me now. (I have 95db loss in right ear, 90 in left)
Jennifer:
My bad; like I said, I didn’t know much about autistics :-/.
By your definition, I don’t think ASL is that type of concrete visual thinking. It is highly abstract, but borrows most of the signs from the function of the topic in question. The official translation of ‘dog’ in ASL is slapping your leg and snapping your fingers. i.e “Here, boy.” This obviously only applies to domesticated dogs. Wolves, coyotes, foxes have their own sign - all based on their long snouts. But to get beyond ‘dog’, i.e to talk about bulldogs, mutts, chihuahua, etc - it’s necessary to first sign ‘dog’, then describe them - But afterwards, designating something - either a sign for the type of dog, or a location for a specific dog (as if the dog in question is fictuously standing in that spot). Of course, if the dog’s in sight, just point at it to talk about it, or point at it and sign “similar” to talk about it’s type.
I envy those people who can envision entire works of art or circuit diagrams in their head. I do that with programming - I can envision the entire program in my head - Not bits of code, but functional bits; and once I start writing the code down, the hard part’s already done. But I’m a horrible artist, with awful penmanship, and even when I meditate on it, I can’t envision more than just a single image in my head.
what i most like about deaf people is the way they can talk with their mouths full . . .
Well - Sign language isn’t necessarily limited to Deaf people, you know…
Maybe, but we can’t stuff our mouths if our hands and eyes are busy. ;).