FWIW I genuinely think ASL is easy to learn with the videos I linked above. Overall I think sign is more worthwhile to learn than most other languages, but yes, not some overwhelming necessity. Just very personally enriching and neat. :)
I watched one of the videos and it was clearly a great example of the category. And yet. I think ease of learning varies with language and also with learner. ASL in particular seems likely to be very interpersonally variable—I definitely found it harder than making equivalent progress in French, Chinese, or Japanese, and those last two are famously considered difficult for English-natives. It requires manual dexterity! If you get confused in the middle of a sign language sentence you’re going to poke yourself in the ear or tangle your elbows together or something. You have to look at people’s facial expressions, they have grammatical import—you have to look at those and at their hands. There’s no good way to take notes because it has no written form or transliteration; I wound up, in my class, writing down things like “quotey eyes” (I don’t even remember what that word was) and trying to hang muscle memory on the resemblance between “sorry” and “Canada”. I’m glad you find it easy and exciting! But I believe you’re overgeneralizing.
As a deaf person, I’m always teaching people to sign, like when I move into a new house, and I do see a difference between learners. Some people don’t know what to do with their hands and end up “tangling their elbows together”, as you so vividly describe, while others have a talent as if they’d been waiting to sign all their lives. But this gap mostly closes after 3-5 months of living together. Even people who were pretty bad at the beginning end up being able to interpret a group conversation for me.
Not to diminish the difficulty—to do anything like interpret a group conversation, the whole group needs to put in some effort to slow down and speak only one at a time, and it’s still exhausting for an interpreter who’s only been learning for a few months. Not to mention the food on their plate goes cold.
I’m just saying. I don’t think a lack of progress necessarily something to scare you, but then again, I don’t know what it’s like to learn sign without someone to sign with. Pretty sure it’s usually a lot faster to become a productive conversator in any sign language than any spoken natural lang—the only thing you really need is the hand alphabet, and then the person you’re talking to can show you the signs for every new word you spell out.
I appreciate this timeline! My emergency plan if I unexpectedly have a deaf baby one day is to find someone fluent in sign language to move in with us and do, if necessary, hardcore sign immersion, and 3-5 months is quick enough that I would not need to worry about the baby acquiring brain damage.
FWIW I genuinely think ASL is easy to learn with the videos I linked above. Overall I think sign is more worthwhile to learn than most other languages, but yes, not some overwhelming necessity. Just very personally enriching and neat. :)
I watched one of the videos and it was clearly a great example of the category. And yet. I think ease of learning varies with language and also with learner. ASL in particular seems likely to be very interpersonally variable—I definitely found it harder than making equivalent progress in French, Chinese, or Japanese, and those last two are famously considered difficult for English-natives. It requires manual dexterity! If you get confused in the middle of a sign language sentence you’re going to poke yourself in the ear or tangle your elbows together or something. You have to look at people’s facial expressions, they have grammatical import—you have to look at those and at their hands. There’s no good way to take notes because it has no written form or transliteration; I wound up, in my class, writing down things like “quotey eyes” (I don’t even remember what that word was) and trying to hang muscle memory on the resemblance between “sorry” and “Canada”. I’m glad you find it easy and exciting! But I believe you’re overgeneralizing.
As a deaf person, I’m always teaching people to sign, like when I move into a new house, and I do see a difference between learners. Some people don’t know what to do with their hands and end up “tangling their elbows together”, as you so vividly describe, while others have a talent as if they’d been waiting to sign all their lives. But this gap mostly closes after 3-5 months of living together. Even people who were pretty bad at the beginning end up being able to interpret a group conversation for me.
Not to diminish the difficulty—to do anything like interpret a group conversation, the whole group needs to put in some effort to slow down and speak only one at a time, and it’s still exhausting for an interpreter who’s only been learning for a few months. Not to mention the food on their plate goes cold.
I’m just saying. I don’t think a lack of progress necessarily something to scare you, but then again, I don’t know what it’s like to learn sign without someone to sign with. Pretty sure it’s usually a lot faster to become a productive conversator in any sign language than any spoken natural lang—the only thing you really need is the hand alphabet, and then the person you’re talking to can show you the signs for every new word you spell out.
I appreciate this timeline! My emergency plan if I unexpectedly have a deaf baby one day is to find someone fluent in sign language to move in with us and do, if necessary, hardcore sign immersion, and 3-5 months is quick enough that I would not need to worry about the baby acquiring brain damage.