I didn’t word my OP very well. That’s what I get for beginning a thread just before going to bed.
I guess what I’m really looking for is to hear from people who’ve learned ASL about how long it took them to become proficient in the language, so that I will have something to compare to my future experiences. If I have some idea how long it takes people who’ve actually done it, I will have some idea how long it will take me.
How long did it take you, uglybeech?
I certainly never got to instructor level. After a year and a half or so I became proficient enough to communicate fairly well. And I was taught by a deaf instructor at hte college level so I learned correct ASL with grammar and inflection etc. I guess I’m just trying to reinforce the idea that it won’t go faster than learning any other language. I would imagine it would take *at least * 5 years (with a great deal of time investment) to become proficient enough in any language to instruct others - that is if you want to instruct them correctly. I don’t think tapes and continuing ed courses are going to do it either. Have you ever known a French teacher who learned French that way?
You will notice that I said “foreign to English” and not “foreign to the US.”
It’s also the language used to conduct the vast majority of education in the US, especially at the high school and college level.
It’s still foreign to English.
Actually, we–not including you, evidently–do.
Thus proving the case that it’s a foreign language to English.
Well, you “blew it” since ASL, along with any other non-English language language, is, in fact foreign to English.
After many years of off-and-on study of various issues relating to languages, including ASL and JSL, and linguistics, I can honestly say that you are the one and only person with a linguistic background of any level who defines foreign language as you do.
All of the stuff above this point is IMHO. Now, to the issue of the OP:
The best way, in my experience, to learn a foreign language is to practice what works best for you. In other words, try the various things mentioned in this thread and then see what works for you!
Well, I don’t consider it a “foriegn” language- it is a odd pidgen dialect of English. I rest my opinion on the fact that if there is no sign for a particular word, you spell it out in American English (using the signs for the various letters of the Alphabet). Also, those who are super-fluent in ASL still read regular English. In fact the “written form of ASL” is Regular American English for most purposes and users.
I say it is a pidgen as it’s grammar is simplified like pidgen languages usually are.
Thus, it’s a pidgen dialect of American English, not a “foriegn” language. It’s even called American Sign Language.
DrDeth you have got to be kidding. Maybe the way you learned it was a pidgen dialect of English, and your hearing-impaired co-workers probably dumbed it down so it would be very English-like to you, but ASL is definitely not English.
The hardest part of learning ASL, in my experience, was getting people to disconnect themselves from the idea that there are words in the same way words exist in English. A single sign, such as “meet”, can convey subject, object, distance (i.e., we met from far away), and so on. The dictionaries may have just a single sign bringing the “d” hands together. However depending on how you sign it, it can be “we meet”, “you met me”, “I met you”, “I met her from afar”, etc.–all in one word. It is a very alien language, and many many Deaf people don’t know English in any case.
IMHO the very fact ASL is not English is the biggest reason why deaf people have a hard time succeeding in schools or in the workplace.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. So wrong that it makes me wonder if you’ve read the thread at all, since these things have been addressed already.
It’s the case that not every word exists in ASL, and so it borrows from English when it’s necessary. But then, every language borrows from other languages; since most ASL speakers are literate in English, it’s obviously natural that English should be the source of borrowed words. But if you believe that users of ASL are naturally competent in reading and writing English, I’d venture that you’ve never seen writing by a native speaker of ASL. Acquiring literacy in English is challenging for ASL speakers.
Its grammar is not “simplified”, and as I’ve pointed out already, the grammar of ASL is fundamentally different from that of English. Grammatically, it doesn’t even resemble English.
It’s interesting to note that ASL has some mutual intelligibility with LSF (French Sign Language) - an ASL speaker can communicate with some difficulty with an LSF speaker. Whereas an ASL speaker can’t communicate at all with a British Sign Language speaker, since the languages are unrelated.
I suppose it’s common enough to believe that sign languages are merely gestural equivalents to the spoken languages of the hearing community around them. It’s completely untrue, though, and had you bothered to read the thread, you would have realized that.
By that twisted logic, English is French.
That’s quite an amazing claim if you are claim if you mean that those individuals read English at the same skill as they communicate in their native language. Perhaps you’d care to show your proof?
:smack:
should be:
Er, no. Concept’s right, names need a bit of tweaking. 
SEE is very different from ASL. Specifically, it’s a word-for-word translation of spoken English, and as a result is rather awkward if you’re coming to it from the ASL side of things. For example, instead of making a tossing-over-the-shoulder gesture to indicate that the action happened in the past as you would do in ASL, you’d fingerspell -ed on the end of the sign for the verb. Conversely, if the verb tense is in the present, you’d tack an -ing on the end. And so forth.
The name for what you’re thinking of is actually Pidgin Sign Language, or PSE. As you’ve noted, it’s ASL in English order. However, it can range from ‘very ASL-y’ to ‘very English-y’ depending on the proficiency of the speakers in ASL or English as it’s understood.
My parents started out with SEE, but gradually moved to an extremely Englishy kind of PSE. And when I went to Gallaudet as a visiting student, I took more ASL classes. So I’d guess my signing is mainly an Englishy flavor of PSE.
(I’m a deaf person who relies on both oral and signing methods to communicate, by the way)
I wasn’t aware of the term “Pidgin Sign Language” but I think describing SEE as a sort of pidgin is not inaccurate - I was unaware just how extensive the use of English grammar was, though, which is interesting. Perhaps a better analogy would be to Singlish, a dialect of “English” spoken in Singapore that uses mostly English vocabulary with essentially Hokkienese grammar. I think “Signed Exact English” appears to meet the linguistic definition of a pidgin, though. And it’s pretty clear that a native ASL speaker, especially one with no hearing and thus no exposure during their very early years to English grammar would probably not find SEE a very natural way to communicate, no?
:smack: I should have said Pidgin Signed English, not Pidgin Sign Language. Please accept that correction in my previous reply – that’s the actual name of that particular flavor, and isn’t used in the sense where it’s meant to differentiate between true pidgins and those that aren’t. I leave that discussion up to people with much more linguistic chops than me. For example, I’ve had interpreters ask me before an event what style of sign I preferred – ASL, PSE, or SEE.
Either way, your comment about native ASL speakers vis a vis SEE is pretty accurate in my experience, although I’d stretch it to cover anyone who didn’t learn SEE as their first mode of communication. It’s an awfully stylized way of talking, if you ask me. However, I’d beg to differ on the “no exposure to English grammar”, since deaf kids typically learn to read probably about the same time as hearing kids. With varying levels of proficiency, natch, resulting in the usual spread of abilities. At least, I haven’t heard anyone commenting about their deaf kid learning to read later than usual.
Regarding the Singlish, that’s pretty nifty. Have any linguists set up camp in Singapore to study it? Has it been formalized as a dialect or is it an informal pidgin type of thing that develops naturally? (In case you can’t tell, I’m an English major who sometimes wishes she’d been a linguistics major 
)
Ahem.
While I’m glad to see people get all fired up about language, I began this thread in General Questions because, well, I had some general questions about the length of time it takes most people to learn sign language.
A moderator moved it into IMHO, and so now it seems up for grabs. Can we stay on task, please? I really would like to hear from others who’ve learned the language.
Thanks.
I’m no expert, as I don’t speak any sort of sign language, but I’ve run into deaf people on the internet who had serious difficulties with English literacy. It may be that they suffered from other learning disabilities, but I imagine that it’s hard to acquire facility in a language strictly in written form. That’s not to say that most deaf people don’t, because obviously they do - but is it really true that profoundly deaf children usually learn to read at the same pace as hearing children?
I’ll try to stop hijacking at this point, but I’m sure Singlish has been studied formally. I couldn’t direct you to any papers on the subject, though. It’s quite a natural, informal dialect and the government of Singapore has actually taken pains to discourage its use, encouraging folks to speak “proper English”, though I doubt their efforts will be successful at discouraging it in its formal sphere.
Sorry, Large Marge, I’ll duck out of this thread since I’ve already said all I know about sign language. I don’t want to encourage further hijackery.
Informal sphere, I mean.
I had a very bad experience in my attempt to learn ASL, but I can blame that entirely on the class and the teacher. My advice is to seek out a teacher who can give individual attention and actually, ah, has an interest in seeing you learn (my teacher was just bad by any standards of teaching), and a small class size (we had over thirty people in my class, which made many things frustrating and excruciating.)
ASL is not for everyone. I’m another linguistics major and I took the class because of my general interest in different types of languages, and I discovered that while I’ve got a good ear for verbal languages, my visual and muscle memory just didn’t work as well to keep up with remembering and properly using signs. YMMV, as they say. I say definitely try out a class and see how you fare. If you have success, it is a very, very useful skill.