There’s a website where you can learn ASL (American Sign Language) on your own, free and it’s a 31 Day program! The woman on there, her name is Rochelle Barlow, she runs the site and she actually is a homeschool teacher and teaches ASL. I am passing this on to some of you guys cause most of y’all on here is open-minded and curious and it is something important to learn.
I truly believe this site is helpful for some people who can not afford to going to ASL classes, or someone like me that just enjoys learning something new. This site will help with that. Once you sign up you will put in your email address and Rochelle sends you emails on tips on how to sign, gives you practice sheets, and gives you your weekly videos. And its all online. No need to paying for anything. (Unless if you want to she has something very different to this program)
IMO and yes, this site is really amazing and is important because you never know if someone who is deaf or HOH needs help, if you end up losing your hearing ability this is something you will at least have on the back of your head, and it is just like any other language and should be taught.
His best friend in high school was hearing impaired and he learned to communicate with him using ASL though he says he’s a little rusty now. I think the same friend encouraged him to get into acting when he was about 15 years old.
Not about being deaf but…
When I go to conventions I carry a totoro named Percy around with me. A few years ago we got the chance to meet Tom Hiddleston, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans. When I went in for the picture, I was a little off because my wife wasn’t with me so I sort of stammered out asking the guys to hold Percy while I found a place to stand. (I’m 5’4, everyone was bigger than me) Sebastian recognized him from 2014 when he almost signed it and we got this amazing picture:
So he wanted to hold Percy and all but snatched him from my hands. Anthony Mackie was like a child going “totoro totoro!” And snatched it from him declaring HE was going to hold it and after a few seconds of this, Chris Evans grabbed it, put Percy in his lap like he was their dad taking away a favored toy. It was the best Captain America moment ever. I can’t find the picture for some reason but it’s cute as hell
Nicaraguan Sign Language is a sign language largely spontaneously developed by deaf children in Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. It is of particular interest to the linguists who study it, because it offers a unique opportunity to study what they believe to be the birth of a new language.
It’s not ‘what they believe to be a new language’, it is a new language. As in that’s not under dispute and it’s not rare for new languages to come into being. It’s not amazing as an exception but as proof of a rule: that humans invent language anew even when isolated from linguistic input, in only two short generational hops (pidgin and creole stages). What’s amazing is how easily and determinedly humans do it. Our brains are hard-wired for language. The NSL case allowed linguists to see this happen in almost lab-like conditions and thus prove the theory of language acquisition because of the children’s isolation from linguistic input, due to their deafness.
So the case of NSL is amazing (and it is pretty heartwarming in its particulars it has to be said) but not because it is exceptional, but because of what it shows us about our universal experience. We all did this. Every child acquiring their first language invents it anew. It’s an extraordinary process, and the thing that makes humans human.
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