Any deaf BYCers?

[EweSheep]

Quote:
LOL! You are alot like me LOLOL!

I love to look at them funny and say can you talk? They said no and I would say "but your lips move, just add the voice to it!" I don't care how squeaky or sounded tinny they are but I know alot of them do not have the speech therapy like I have for YEARS. Alot of people did not know that I was deaf but thought I was a foreigner because I spoke with an "accent". My husband loves to hear my voice with an "asssssssent"

What I do miss about the hearing world, as time goes on, is my hearing. It will not get any better, it would just get worst as I age. I'm already 45 years old and I sure can hold my own if it need to be.

 

[speckledhen]

Someone once asked me if I'd rather be deaf or blind, if I had to choose. Deaf, any day of the week, I said. Sights I would miss, but most of today's modern sounds are too loud and obnoxious for me anyway. Some sounds I be very happy to avoid altogether, like the dadblame television!

 

[Kev]

mom'sfolly :

I think some of the history of ASL is interesting too. It's origins are a combination of native American signs/language originating on Martha's Vineyard and in the Deaf schools in the east and the French sign language that Gallaudet brought to America. It is considered in the language family of French sign language, not British. This accounts for some of the syntax differences between ASL and English.

Yep. ASL is also a fully fledged language of its own and separate from English. It's a common and very persistent misconception that ASL is English on the hands. Nobody would even consider Spanish or French being variants of English with mangled grammar... yet it's a persistent attitude in regards to ASL. Fortunately it seems modern ASL classes are getting better with including some history, culture etc on top of being vocabulary classes plus Deaf Culture related courses are starting to show up going into the culture/history in more depth.

Another fact: American ASL users will be able to converse with French sign users fairly well. ASL and British Sign users will have a difficult time understanding each other due to both languages being extremely different.​

 

[Kev]

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ASL is a different language. It's not "chopped up", it is a fully fledged language of its own and simply happens not to follow English grammar, like a lot of other languages. French or Spanish are not "chopped up" either..

I thought some of the other comments were not very nice and belittled the Deaf community("know it all" attitude and not being on top of things in outside world, etc). That problem exists in all sorts of communities, not just Deaf community(and I would disagree with Deaf people in general being out of touch). I could toss out a couple topics a lot of people in as you say, "the outside world" seemingly are out of touch with reality about.

"The friend of my friend said it so it must be true" has been around forever, surely you've heard something like "My friend's friend's Aunt had a bat get stuck in her hair so bats !!DO!! get stuck in people's hair!!"(and found it extremely difficult to convince them to consider it possibly was not true at all?). Heck, there's even a tv show devoted to this kind of subject- Mythbusters. In other words, the Deaf community is exactly the same as anybody else.