Friday, March 24, 2017

Sign Language Class (Friday Five Edition)

Since I lost my job I have been trying to stay busy.  I was lucky enough to get some training money with my severance and they did not have to be IT classes.  After telling my mom that I was not going back for another degree (she is a college professor and loves to encourage me to go back to school), I looked around at the local classes to see what I would like to learn.  I saw that one was offering Sign Language classes.  I don't know what my draw to Sign Language is as I do not know anyone who is deaf, but I have always been fascinated by it.  I love watching the interpreters at live events.


1.  I learned the alphabet and some basic words when I was in second grade.  I went to a Montessori school and there I remember being taught these basic things.  Up to the start of the class I could still did remember the alphabet and a couple words like love, want, and day. 

2.  The class was a 6 week course taught through one of the local universities which as a vast non-degree curriculum.  The class was taught by a deaf person.  The first day there was an interpreter there explaining a lot of the details.  The rest of the classes there was not.  It is a little challenging to take a class without an interpreter there, but it made us learn a little bit more to communicate.  We would write on the board or finger spell things to get our thoughts across.  I do think I learned more without being able to rely on the interpreter.

3.  We played games.  I think this was the most fun and the way I learned.  Remember the game telephone where everyone sat in a circle and one person started and whispered something to the person next to them?  They would go around the circle back to the first person and what was said was so mangled it didn't make sense.  We played the deaf version of that where everyone stood in a line and the person at the back would show a sentence (or word spelled out) to the person in front.  It would go through the line to the first person, and like telephone, it was a mangled mess.  It was funny to see what it started at and how it ended. 

The other game we played the last week was that the teacher started with a word and each person would add one word to that sentence.   The sentence we ended up with on the last class was "Women love watching birds fly in the evening and don't love to eat cats or dogs, but they want many flowers on Friday".

4. The hardest part for me was reading the signs, especially when it was spelled out.  It's easy to practice signing, but if you don't have anyone to sign to you, it's hard to keep up.  The other students had said the same thing, especially about the finger spelling.  Your brain is so busy trying to figure out what letter it is, you forget what the first few were and then you can't figure out what the word is supposed to be.  And it doesn't help that I'm a horrible speller.

5. The American Sign Language (ASL) sentence structure is different from the English language.  Like when you are speaking Spanish, the adjectives are always after the noun and in English the adjectives are before the noun.  In ASL the questions are backwards for the most part.  Instead of "Where were you born?" it would be "Born Where?". 

I have really enjoyed these past six weeks, though I feel like we haven't scratched the surface.  Luckily there is another 6 week course taught by the same teacher.  And I have already signed up for it. 



What other languages do you know?  Have you ever learned Sign Language?


I'm linking up with Fairytales and Fitness and Running on Happy for Friday Five 2.0

9 comments:

  1. This is amazing that you are learning sign language! I can only spell one word and it is "Matt". The only reason I know this is because some girls in middle school liked a boy named matt and they would spell it in sign language so know one would no when they talked about him. I figured it out though..lol. Good luck with the next class!

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  2. What a fabulous skill to learn. I bet it's not as easy as it looks

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    1. It really isn't. And I found some nights my hands would hurt as I don't use those muscles so much.

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  3. This is so cool!! I tried to learn sing language many years ago... because there was a trend about teaching babies sign language to communicate. I still remember a few basics, like More, milk, food, up, help. I need to practice more!

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    1. I'm afraid I will forget what I learned as I don't have use to practice either. Very excited for the second course.

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  4. It sounds like you have a fun class! I bet it is weird just being expected to communicate with sign language right off the bat. I am learning Spanish with an app on my phone. I have been doing it sing the beginning of the year, and at this point I am much better at reading Spanish than coming up with the words myself. I am going to stick with it and I hope to be fluent someday!

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    1. That's great. I took three years in of Spanish in high school and remember the basics. Keep it up!

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  5. This sounds amazing! I tried to teach myself sign language once in high school. I think I ended up signing the alphabet and maybe one or two words but that was about it. I've forgotten almost all of it now.

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