Lawrence.Brick@f210.n273.z1.fidonet.org (Lawrence Brick) (11/20/90)
Index Number: 11899
[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]
Since ASL has never been officially recognized and used for communication
in schools for the deaf, it can't be blamed for failure. The children
used ASL when they weren't being watched by the adults who advocated
Signed English, oral, or anything but ASL. When TC was first used in
schools for the deaf, the teachers really used sim com(simultaneous
communication) and if one watched them carefully, one would observe that
when they used both voice and signs that often many words were omitted in
the signing of what they voiced. This resulted in the deaf children not
getting the full exposure to the English language. I have asked signing
hearing people to "turn off" their voice and it's amazing to watch how
much clearer their signs are and if they keep signing without voice, they
unconsciously begin to sign less in English and more towards ASL by
leaving out the articles, prepositions, etc. In fact they begin to act
like deaf people. I know of only two schools for the deaf in the USA
that officially and publicly say that the teachers use ASL in the
education program with deaf children and that's the PA School for the
Deaf in Philadelphia and the Learning Center in Framingham, Mass.
They've been using ASL for less than ten years. So until ASl has been
tried and used with children in educational programs from birth to
adulthood, it is not appropriate to blame ASL for the poor acheivement of
deaf children. The best way to teach English is through writing and
reading and ASL is a form of in the air communication (it can't be
written or read in print) and can be used to explain and discuss concepts
and ideas from the books the children read and to discuss with the
children what they're writing about. ASL can be used to explain English.
For example, in ASL, I might sign, "Japan finished touch" and explain
that "I've been to Japan" is the English equivalent. In any case I'm
enjoying the various thoughts expressed by various people on total
communication and the like.
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Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!273!210!Lawrence.Brick
Internet: Lawrence.Brick@f210.n273.z1.fidonet.orgJames.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack) (03/15/91)
Index Number: 13983
[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]
Hey, Jay. You see that post referring to ASL as pig latin? I wonder
if the uninformed knows that Japanese and Chinese people consider English
a barbarians' noise pretending to be a language?
Too bad they don't avail themselves to the research showing the unique
character of ASL as a bona fide language. Dr. Sam Supalla and others
have recently added to this information. It appears ASL shares certain
characters with the vast majority of the languages of the world that
English does not. I will tryt o get a hold of that info later. One
of the biggest things appears to be word order and consistent gender
specific references. English is a hodge podge of of such references
and sometimes lack them at all in certain types of sentences. I other
words, English is inconsistent. It was an interesting collection of
facts regarding languages that fit the most frequent characteristics.
ASL was almost always sharing a column with a long list of languages
with the same characteristics that make a language a language. On several
ocassions, English stood alone. They suspected it might be due to English's
heavily borrowing from other languages and twisting the rules for their
use so that you get what is generally agreed about English anyway-a
mess. I think Dr. Supalla-if I recall right, as I am not sure-suggested
that perhaps English itself was not a true language. That was funny.
In any case, ASL has been knocked so much as not being a real language
that one must wonder how does it manage to remain in existence. I mean,
the classic language of latin is practically kaput and it was real
enough. I guess Veditz was right in that old film where he said:
"We love sign language. It is the noblest gift God gave to Deaf people
in all the world. We will preserve it, for as long as there deaf people
on the earth, there will be sign language."
Languages are the people who use it as much as it is a communication
tool of those same people. It is their essence, their doorway to their
hearts and souls. Whenever people outside of a culture belittle the
language of another people, they are belittling the people themselves.
A pity we Deaf people continue to endure such lump sum insults.
Well, I guess it is like that old Jew told that Nazi not long ago.
You tried to get rid of me, of us, my people. But you know what? We
are still here. We are still here and we will always be here. We are
all over the world. We won't go away.
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Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!300!14!James.Womack
Internet: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.orgRobin.Chronister@f429.n275.z1.fidonet.org (Robin Chronister) (03/28/91)
Index Number: 14537
[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]
Kevin,
I read your message about ASL, and I agree with you, that the deaf
community takes pride in their language. It is not hard for a deaf
child with deaf parents to have easy communication at home, but deaf
children with hearing parents DO have a hard time. ASL is not their
first language always, so that is why there is so much argument, I
think.
To me, the most important choice about language is to pick what the
child can understand, or be able to use different languages if that
helps.
Thanks for your reply. I hope to hear from you again. It is good
for me to hear opinions from deaf people, instead of only hearing people
Robin
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Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!275!429!Robin.Chronister
Internet: Robin.Chronister@f429.n275.z1.fidonet.org