#3 Dave Bell- Signed Languages vary massively from culture to
culture. Chinese Signed Language vs. British Sign vs. French Sign
Language are as different as thier spoken languages are. However,
American Signed Lanuage and French Sign share a common root, but in
this day and age no longer resemble eachother enough that signing
between and American and a Frenchman would be understandable. I
recently met a group of visiting Deaf Students from France who were
traveling around to Gallaudet, The American School for the Deaf,
and I believe NYC as well. The thrashing of languages between us
was quite amazing.
There are many D/deaf bloggers who are using You Tube, and the ease
of direct communication is not only freeing for many, but shows the
intense link that people who are Deaf and hard of hearing *must*
keep with technology in order to stay connected to each other. It
is a difficult and challenging place to be in, as the expenses for
purchasing and maintaining hearing aides and other devices are
often prohibitvely expensive. On top of that, keeping up with
changes in TTY technology, video relay devices, Sidekicks and other
messaging devices can be utterly overwhelming. The challengees to
stay connected to your friends and to those you need to communicate
with (hearing doctors, co-workers, etc) abound.
I am currently in an ASL Lingustics and ASL-English Interpreter
program and really enjoy seeing the young
D/deaf students out there using You Tube to stay connected. It
surprised me that many of my older professors did not know of this
communication "revolution", but were excited to check it out. FYI
there are also Deaf Bloggers out there who keeping English blogs as
well.
Comment statistics for CecilyS on the Making Light blog
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by CecilyS:
Show all comments by CecilyS.