How long do you think it will take me to learn American Sign Language if I really work at it? I don’t mean minimum proficiency; I’m talking about being good enough to instruct others.
Three years? Five years?
What was your experience? Did you have formal training or learn from a friend or family member? Did you practice every day? How long did it take you to become skilled at it?
If you’re serious about doing it as a career, just go to some college and major in ASL.
I already have a college degree. If I do learn ASL, it will be through continuing education courses and videotapes.
Do you know ASL? How long did it take you to become proficient?
As with virtually any other language, the best way to learn ASL is to participate in communities that use it to communicate. Videotapes and books are good for starters, but they won’t get you far in the long run. The more you are exposed to it, and the more you are forced to rely on it for communication, the faster it will come.
I learned ASL as a child, from one of the neighborhood kids–a hearing boy who had deaf parents. His parents actually wanted me to help him with English, but I think I learned more ASL from him. However, we moved to another state, I stopped using ASL completely, and forgot everything.
We have a son (now 10yo) who was born deaf, although he was four months old before we knew it. I immediately started re-learning and using ASL with him, but it was mostly infant/toddler level vocabulary. After a couple of surgeries, the doctors were able to get his hearing to usable levels, and he has worn hearing aids since then. We still use some of the ASL signs (very useful in noisy places or across rooms), but not often.
Our 14yo daughter, though, still uses the little ASL she knows on a regular basis. Her high school has a large percentage of deaf students, so ASL is offered as a “foreign” language there. She’s taking French this year, but hopes to take ASL next year.
Actually, ASL is a foreign language to English speakers. That’s why quite a few schools offer it as a foreign language.
My experience with learning it is mostly one of self-taught by immersion method, along with video tapes. That was all quite some time ago. In the meantime, I picked up some Japanese Sign Language via conversations in that language with native speakers of same and also by diligently practicing the televised lessons for JSL on NHK-E. Sadly, that was ten years ago and I’ve had no use for it since. Now that I’m living in Korea, I intend to learn KSL the same way.
Kiminy: That’s quite a moving story. Thanks for sharing it.
I’d say 3 to 5 years would be long enough to become good enough to instruct others.
My husband and I took a course last year at the JC. The class was once a week for 6 months, and by the end of it, we were pretty proficient. We practiced every day, we studied not only our class materials, but flash cards and other materials, we watched videos, and we attended a monthly social gathering of deaf and hard of hearing citizens in our community a few times.
We passed the class with flying colors, and considered taking the second class, but haven’t yet. My husband’s sister took the second class and is now considering looking for more advanced classes and possibly a career in translating.
We don’t use it as often as we should around the house, and I must admit, I’m really, really rusty already. We should continue to use it, and to learn more. I don’t want to forget it.
I forgot to mention that there’s also a way to write Sign Languages.
My experience is a bit like **psycat90’**s. We had a couple hearing impaired co-wrokers in the group, and several more on that floor. Thus, we had a twice weekly 1 hour class- volunteer. I got to the point where i could carry on a basic conversation in about six months. However, I haven’t used it much since leaving that job, thus I remember only a very few signs now.
It’s been my experience that some people take to it like a duck to water, and others find it about as difficult as learning any other foreign language. I developed a passable knowledge of ASL in just a few months, but I later lost interest and most of my knowledge dissipated after a couple of years. My wife is deaf, but she’s very oral and has almost no ASL skills. My mother-in-law was a head-up-the-ass AG Bell extremist of the speak-English-or-die variety. But we are planning to adopt deaf children, so pretty soon we are both going to start cracking the books again.
I’ll write some more later—right now I’m stressed for time. Why do you want to learn ASL?
I became proficient within a couple of months. I didn’t have much choice. They didn’t offer captioning services.
Don’t forget that ASL is just as ‘foreign’ as any other language - its grammar, in fact, is topic-comment, which makes it somewhat more similar to Japanese than to English. It’s a common misconception that ASL is simply a way of communicating English through gestures, when in fact it’s a completely different language, and one that involves a totally different channel of communication than spoken language to boot (which means that it features, for example, spatial puns that couldn’t be explained in English.)
My understanding is that in most cases, the parents of deaf children who learn “sign language” actually end up learning a pidgin variety of ASL called “signed exact English”, which uses ASL gestures to communicate English words using strictly English grammar. Learning ASL well is probably quite difficult for most people.
I spent a year and a half learning ASL. As Excalibre said it is very much a different language then ESL (English Sign Language). While signs are much the same, the way the grammer works is different.
If you don’t have anyone else to speak with I would say it will take tou much longer to “click” into the mindset of the language. That was my problem. I had classmates and one friend that was learning ASL with me. There were also a couple guys upstairs from me who were deaf (one was deaf/blind) and helped me with grammer and signs.
After a year and a half I still felt like I couldn’t communicate as well as I wanted.
And, after that time I could never get a handle on fingerspell. Something about it just didn’t click with me.
I have a master’s and nearly a PhD in linguistics, and having studied ASL quite a bit when I was learning it to teach my son, I realize that ASL is a completely different language from English, in many different ways. I used quotes around the word “foreign” because from a technical point of view, it is not a foreign language. As Monty points out in his post, there are variations of sign language in different countries, and they are not necessarily at all similar to each other, except in that they use hand gestures, finger spellings, and body/facial expression.
When I was learning ASL for my son, I was also determined NOT to use SEE (Signed Exact English). At the time, we did not know if he would ever hear well enough to speak English, and the grammatical bits of SEE are completely extraneous to a fluent speaker of ASL. If his hearing had not improved, we would have continued with ASL, and done everything we could to help him learn that language well. His grandparents were even willing to learn ASL if necessary.
As it was, he did actually use sign language as his “first” language, and he was as creative in his use of signs as a hearing child might be in his use of spoken language. For example, we made up a sign for Cheerios–his only finger food at the time, and well before he could finger-spell anything that complicated, which was a C-hand moving to an O-hand, kind of like chewing. He learned to associate that sign with eating in general, and used the sign spontaneously to tell us that he was hungry, even though he didn’t want Cheerios specifically. He also used More and Like spontaneously on a regular basis.
As with any skill, though, if you don’t use it, you will lose it. Now our focus is to get him to catch up in reading and writing English, since he CAN hear well enough to use it, and at this point, teaching him ASL would alienate him more than he already is. We have tried to use fingerspelling as a way of reinforcing his spelling skills, but he has problems with fine motor control, too, and finger-spelling is very challenging for him.
From a technical, linguistic point of view, it is a foreign language as it’s not English. For example, Spanish is spoken in the United States as a native language for quite a few individuals born and raised in the US; and it’s still a foreign language to English.
BTW, my degree, albeit just an A.B., is also in Linguistics. I also hope to follow your footsteps, so to speak, and eventually obtain a Ph.D. in Linguistics.
The last I checked, the word foreign means “from another country,” at least when it is used to describe people, languages, or cultures. ASL is NOT from another country. (To be picky, English is not technically from North America or the US, but by the time the US was established, English was the dominant and local language, which is why we do not refer to it as a foreign language.)
I would argue that Spanish is not truly a foreign language in the US today. At the same time, we do not refer to the Cherokee language or any of the native American languages as “foreign” languages, either, even though they are very different from English.
The point here is:
ASL is a language that is quite different from English. As such, I have no argument with it being accepted as a “foreign” language for school credit, just as I know people who have taken native American languages for “foreign” language credit.
However, it is a language that is as native to the US as English is, if not more so. Referring to it as a “foreign” language implies semantically that it was brought here from another country, or that it does not belong here. It was largely spread by Gallaudet (an American), based in part on French sign language, specifically for American deaf children. However, his version of ASL merged with the sign language that had naturally evolved in deaf communities in this country. As a result, ASL has changed significantly since Gallaudet taught it early in the 19th century, to the point that Gaulledet probably would not recognize significant portions of it.
To be honest, I originally put the word “foreign” in quotes to avoid people nitpicking over the fact that is it NOT a foreign language. It never occurred to me that I would have to defend my reference to ASL as a language that is native to the US.
Do you know any already? Have you started? Are you just starting?
Unlike most of the people in this thread - I’m not fluent, because I found it really hard. I took one class with a great teacher and then, three quarters of a class (I just stopped going. wasn’t worth his crap to continue.) with an absolute jerk who also couldn’t teach. Stupidly, I didn’t try again with someone who wasn’t awful - so, most of it has gone.
The vocabulary wasn’t really a problem. Not trivial, but not horribly difficult. The problem was the grammar; it’s just so different. My only other experience learning language was Spanish, which isn’t identical to English grammar, but it isn’t that different, substitute the English words for Spanish ones, add a few articles here, switch the adjectives there, and tada the sentence is right (or mostly so, anyway).
ASL, for me, was like learning to communicate again from scratch. I had to figure out what I wanted to say (not the words, but the concept) and then figure out how to say it. Not as easy as it reads - not for me, anyway
In the local community college in my area, after having finished two years of ASL classes, you may then take a two year ASL interpreting program. My guess is that at that point (4 years out), you could interpret. I’ve also never had (nor seen) a hearing instructor.
I have been interested in learning how to sign since I was a child.
I learned the signing alphabet when I was 8, because I attended school with a girl who had a brother who was deaf. She taught it to several of us, and we all used it until we parted ways after sixth grade. I still know it and use it.
So that is was got me started, but there are several reasons I want to learn it now:
I’m looking for a career switch, and ASL can lead me in a lot of different directions. If I worked as a translator, I could work in law enforcement or within the court system. I could work as a translator for just one person. I could work for a non-profit, or could provide services to the community. I’ll bet the airlines even have enterpreters on the payroll. And I’m sure that’s just scratching the surface. If you know of other jobs for signers, please feel free to shout them out.
As an ASL teacher, I could work anywhere in the U.S. that there is a demand, and I hear there is great demand here. I could teach in a children’s school for the deaf or teach college courses.
I also have a friend who is nearly deaf, and he exposed me to the deaf community: a very outspoken, charismatic, passionate and maybe even a little angry deaf community. I was captivated.
I have not yet started. I missed the beginning of the school year, so I’ll have to wait several weeks before I can get started. I plan to make calls this week. It’s offered for a very reasonable price at the community college here as part of continuing education. I’m eager to get started, hence the OP on how long it will take to become proficient.
Moved to IMHO.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
Just reiterating what others have said. It is it’s own language and has as much complexity and subtlety as any. It’s not just a matter of becoming proficient in the vocabulary. There’s a complex grammar and inflection, etc. There is the added complication that you may not be able to adapt as well to visual comprehension as others. The only way to find out is to try. But assuming that you have average talent I’d say expect to put as much work and time into it as you would put into becoming fluent in any other language.