A beginning, and a STORY

I am not Deaf. I do not have a Deaf child, a Deaf boyfriend, or a Deaf parent. I am not hearing impaired. I am not in danger of becoming hard of hearing (HoH). I don't want to be a professional ASL/English interpreter. I have no plans to quit my job and go to Gallaudet full-time. Actually, I love my job, and it has nothing to do with Deafness (though I have a good number of Deaf colleagues).

I'm studying ASL for entirely selfish reasons: I want to learn it; I want to be able to talk to Deaf people; I want to be a part, even tangentially, of Deaf culture.

A lot of people who learn ASL, especially after childhood, are Hearing, and I'm just another member of that group. This blog is both for my own personal edification -- I'd like to document my learning process for future reference -- but also hopefully can be a resource, someday, for other Hearing people who are thinking about studying Sign.

So there's my opening argument. Let's move onto the Sign, shall we?

Before I get into any linguistic stuff, let me share my proficiency: I'm currently finishing up ASL 1 (taught by a Deaf professor) at my local community college; I take a weekly all-levels class with a Deaf colleague at work; and I often torture my Deaf friends at work with my hesitant, inaccurate signing.

So about that last one -- I had lunch on Thursday with a Deaf work friend, and I had a great story I just had to tell him. Of course, I got off on the wrong foot immediately: I signed, I HAVE STORY FOR YOU,* but I used the sign for STORY that my ASL professor uses. My friend -- let's call him the Geometer -- looked confused. He fingerspelled back, S-T-O-R-Y? (He must've read my lips or gotten it from context.) YES, I signed. Then he corrected my sign, using this one instead.

My professor's version is similar, but instead of singling out the middle fingers, she uses all the fingers for the same motion. (Actually, it's a little too close to COMFORTABLE for my comfort.) I'm happy to switch to the Geometer's sign; it seems less ambiguous than my professor's. It makes me wonder, though, if people regularly switch between signs depending on who they're talking to.

It's a question that interests me because I can't think of an English analogue. I guess the closest I can think of is changing your vocabulary to jibe with someone else's regionalisms or even education level. But that second one isn't apt at all -- the Geometer and my professor are both very intelligent, well-educated people, and switching between (simple) signs that have the same meaning isn't like dumbing down your speech when talking to a child. Regionalisms might be a better comparison -- in fact, it reminds me a lot of going to school in Boston and being confronted with phrases that had no meaning to me ("bubbler" for "water fountain," "frappe" for "milkshake," etc.)

I have to admit, it's a little overwhelming for a beginner. It's one thing to be in the classroom, where your professor knows exactly what vocab you do and don't know; it's another thing entirely to be in the middle of a conversation with someone who's Deaf and just has to tell you about the cute girl he met on the Metro last weekend. It's the lab versus the real world.


*Told you I had a Hearing accent!!