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Sign language is not a way to speak English using your hands -- it is a distinct language with distinct grammar and distinct vocabulary. If you are born Deaf,

Sign language is not a way to speak English using your hands -- it is a distinct language with distinct grammar and distinct vocabulary. If you are born Deaf, you will not have the opportunity to natively acquire a spoken language. Our brains are not designed to acquire spoken language through writing -- and our spoken languages are designed to be acquired through listening, not reading. It's easy to think that a Deaf signer living in America is a native speaker of English, but they very well may not be, having never heard the sounds and therefore been unable to internalize all of the many, many necessary grammatical and morphological rules of the language. Expecting all Deaf people to simply use written English when dealing with a computer is like expecting all Americans to use Spanish to interact with their computers -- technically possible (Spanish is a perfectly good language, and relatively accessible starting even from grade school here), but ignores the human reality that people want (need) to speak their own language. There are not yet standard ways to write sign languages. Partly this is because of difficulties in translating the medium to text -- unlike speech, sign language production is not entirely linear, in addition to the fact that your hands can be articulated comprehensibly in much more sophisticated ways than your mouth can.

ars 6y ago
Does that mean people with use Sign language as their first language do not read books? How do they learn anything? It really seems to me you are implying they can't read regular English - doesn't that make regular life quite a challenge? I would have assumed learning written English would be high priority. Your answer just makes me even more confused. If they can't read English, what is the computer translating the sign language into? What are they doing with the results? And this just brings up even more questions - how do they speak remotely to people? I was thinking that a video phone was an amazing advance, except you'd have to put the phone several feet away from you, making it pretty hard to see the screen. Every single scenario I'm thinking of just makes the need for written language even more critical - otherwise such a person is almost entirely isolated, except when near other signing people.
- cowboysauce 6y ago
  Most people who know ASL can also communicate in English, but language skills are a spectrum and some people may know enough to get by in daily life, but may not know enough English to understand more complicated topics. It's really no different than a native Spanish speaker living in the United States. Some may only know a basic level of English while others may be equally comfortable in both languages. This isn't even unique to the Deaf community. Something like 15 to 20 percent of the general population are considered functionally illiterate.
bluefirebrand 6y ago
> Expecting all Deaf people to simply use written English when dealing with a computer is like expecting all Americans to use Spanish to interact with their computers Kind of a false equivalence here. For many Americans there is no real reason to learn Spanish. However, I have to imagine that for literally all deaf people learning to read and write the dominant local language is required in order to participate in the larger society. Signs will be written in that language, restaurant menus, newspapers, business emails, etc. You will be surrounded by writing of your local language every day. There doesn't really exist a world where a person can get by without being able communicate with others in their vicinity. Deaf people are more often surrounded by non-deaf people who they will have to communicate with somehow. Sharing a common spoken language is kind of out of the question, sharing a common written language is the next best thing. So, sure. Create a written sign language, make unicode support for it and create new locale settings for each dialect of sign language. This will not eliminate or even really reduce deaf people's need to learn to write their locally dominant language.

ars 6y ago

Does that mean people with use Sign language as their first language do not read books? How do they learn anything? It really seems to me you are implying they can't read regular English - doesn't that make regular life quite a challenge? I would have assumed learning written English would be high priority. Your answer just makes me even more confused. If they can't read English, what is the computer translating the sign language into? What are they doing with the results? And this just brings up even more questions - how do they speak remotely to people? I was thinking that a video phone was an amazing advance, except you'd have to put the phone several feet away from you, making it pretty hard to see the screen. Every single scenario I'm thinking of just makes the need for written language even more critical - otherwise such a person is almost entirely isolated, except when near other signing people.

cowboysauce 6y ago
Most people who know ASL can also communicate in English, but language skills are a spectrum and some people may know enough to get by in daily life, but may not know enough English to understand more complicated topics. It's really no different than a native Spanish speaker living in the United States. Some may only know a basic level of English while others may be equally comfortable in both languages. This isn't even unique to the Deaf community. Something like 15 to 20 percent of the general population are considered functionally illiterate.

bluefirebrand 6y ago

> Expecting all Deaf people to simply use written English when dealing with a computer is like expecting all Americans to use Spanish to interact with their computers Kind of a false equivalence here. For many Americans there is no real reason to learn Spanish. However, I have to imagine that for literally all deaf people learning to read and write the dominant local language is required in order to participate in the larger society. Signs will be written in that language, restaurant menus, newspapers, business emails, etc. You will be surrounded by writing of your local language every day. There doesn't really exist a world where a person can get by without being able communicate with others in their vicinity. Deaf people are more often surrounded by non-deaf people who they will have to communicate with somehow. Sharing a common spoken language is kind of out of the question, sharing a common written language is the next best thing. So, sure. Create a written sign language, make unicode support for it and create new locale settings for each dialect of sign language. This will not eliminate or even really reduce deaf people's need to learn to write their locally dominant language.