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I won't pretend to know about literacy rates among deaf people, but I want to underline jacobr's point here: ASL is not "English with hands" any more than spoke
by jeffool 14y ago
I won't pretend to know about literacy rates among deaf people, but I want to underline jacobr's point here: ASL is not "English with hands" any more than spoken Japanese is "English with different sounds". It's a different language, with different grammar, and different rules. Don't let the "American" throw you off.
They may use familiar words and letters when writing, but you can say the same about many European languages, and as an English speaker figure out some sentences in Spanish or French. Now, you may figure out MORE in written ASL, but it's still different.
Though, if I recall, ASL was based off of a French sign language. That's why adjectives go after the nouns in ASL.
- neilk 14y agoSign languages are proper languages of their own, and even if they are invented by hearing people, when a deaf community adopts the language it usually diverges quickly from the hearing culture language. So, you're right that there was a precedent to ASL that came from France but don't assume that ASL is much like French.
- rmc 14y agoEnglish came from French (& German). (For relaxed definitions of 'French' and 'German')
- pacaro 14y agoYeah, the history of English is waaay more complex than that. But one thing is pretty clear, it isn't a Romance language, and isn't derived from French; it does have a huge French influence, but almost entirely in the form of loan words.
- rmc 14y agoWhat's interesting is how the upper class words are the french words. This is due to the Norman invasion. So the germanic word "cow" which the farmer deals with gets turned into "beef" for the lord. The lowly germanic "chicken" becomes a french "poultry". A simple germanic "house" is not as grand as a french "mansion" or "manor".
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]