Sign languages anybody?

[solocricket]

I've been getting interested in American Sign Language (ASL), and I was wondering if anyone has any experience learning sign languages here? I'm not involved with the deaf community (yet), but I've been watching some YouTube lessons and songs translated into ASL, and I've been learning a little bit from a textbook.

I'm especially interested in people who have learned sign languages along with spoken ones-- what was your experience from a general language learning perspective? Do you find visual languages harder or easier than (or the same as) spoken ones? Were you involved in some way with the deaf community, or did you learn it on your own?

[Allison]

I don't have any experience, but I'm also interested to hear about the experience of those who have learned sign languages.

[Alphathon]

I'd be interested to know too.

I've been toying with the idea of learning some* British Sign Language (BSL) for a while. (I have no practical reason to do so; it would purely be to satisfy my curiosity, although the same could be said of German and Scottish Gaelic too, albeit to a lesser degree.) I'm not really one for classes, so rely heavily on books and online resources. Unfortunately, one issue at least with BSL (which may not be the case with ASL) is the number of available resources. I haven't really been able to find anything good online; the only free† site I've found that seems to cover it in any kind of depth is signstation.org, and it's based around a 695×488px Shockwave applet and uses even smaller (and unscalable in the applet) 320×240px videos; not exactly ideal for learning a sign language. I haven't found any way to download the videos to use in a more useful way either (say, for use on a smartphone or Anki cards).

*I say some because I doubt I'd ever take it much beyond the basics unless I suddenly had some need to, for reasons which will become obvious later in the post.
†I'm fairly reluctant to pay for online courses as it can be quite hard to tell whether they're any good and I really don't want to "buy"‡ one on the off-chance that it is. With something as relatively niche as BSL finding reviews can be tricky.
‡With online courses there's always the risk that the website will simply die at some point, so you're really renting it.

I have had a brief look at book/DVD-based courses and there seem to be one or two available, but most materials seem to be aimed at very young children. As for apps, a search of the Android app store only brings up 32 hits (when "American" is filtered out), several of which are merely guides to monuments or only deal with fingerspelling. There are a few YouTube channels which cover it as well although I'm not sure how deep they go and there aren't many of them.

Probably the biggest hurdle though is the lack of available media. By its very nature there are no books and very little web content available in BSL (or ASL). It's pretty much impossible to have a forum in sign language for example. On the TV side of things, the BBC does a fairly good job at providing its TV content with signing (for example, there are currently 332 programmes available on the iPlayer in the signed category, many of which will be recent, although maybe 10% of them don't seem to actually have signing for whatever reason) and I believe the other main broadcasters here do too (ITV certainly does signed programming, don't know about Channels 4 & 5) but beyond that material is relatively scarce and AFAIK there are no dedicated TV programmes for it (unlike for Gaelic and Welsh). I have no idea if similar practices are common with ASL. (I feel like our broadcasters mainly do it due to their public service obligations, but perhaps I'm just being cynical.) There are some YouTube videos out there but BSL seems a bit too niche to have much content other than a few signed songs. (ASL does seem more common, probably just because of the relative sizes of the UK and US populations.)

In terms of numbers of L1 "speakers" (does one "speak" a sign language?) BSL is fairly comparable to Scottish Gaelic but although it has many more L2 speakers (≈250k L2 speakers to Gaelic's ≈90k total speakers) the lack of written material and a concentrated area of "speakers" (akin to the Irish Gaeltachtaí) means that if you aren't part of the deaf community in some respect actually using it is likely to be quite a challenge. As such in many respects it might as well be a much smaller language from the learner's POV. (Bear in mind that Gaelic is itself a small minority language and is considered endangered.) ASL is more similar to Irish or Welsh in terms of speaker numbers, so I suspect learning resources are similarly more abundant, but I suspect ASL would still have similar usage/materials issues to BSL.

[arthaey]

Back in 2010 or so I spent a little bit of time lacksidasically learning ASL, via a couple beginning classes taught by native signers, reading a bunch about the language and also Deaf culture, and participating in a weekly Meetup group (meant for Deaf folks but very welcoming to respectful hearing students). I got to the point that I could hold basic conversations in a very fumbling way. (I've since lost most of my active skills. I intend to re-learn ASL eventually, but that won't be for a few more years.)

I highly recommend that you learn about the culture & history surrounding the D/deaf community of whichever sign language you chose to study. For ASL and American Deaf people, the context is extremely important for understanding your interactions. I'd imagine this is true (perhaps to varying degrees) in other signing communities as well.

I found plenty of learning materials to pick from, but much of it was poor or middling quality — lots of simple wordlists are out there, but you have to look harder for a good grammar explanation. YouTube has a lot of native content for ASL, once you get to a high enough level of comprehension.

One thing that was uniquely challenging was the lack of a standardized writing system for sign languages. I ended up learning ASLwrite (created by a Deaf man) to take notes with; it also helped me to learn about the possible hand shapes and motions systematically, sort of like learning the IPA helps with learning a language's phonology.

ASLwrite is just one several competing writing systems for sign languages. If you like the idea of written sign language but not this particular implementation, take a look at SignWriting, Stokoe Notation, HamNoSys, SignFont, ASLphabet, SignScript...

For various historical reasons, the ASL community unfortunately has a lot of pushback against writing systems as a concept. So don't expect to find many resources there, nor much support from most American Deaf people you interact with.

[solocricket]

I've been toying with the idea of learning some* British Sign Language (BSL) for a while. (I have no practical reason to do so; it would purely be to satisfy my curiosity, although the same could be said of German and Scottish Gaelic too, albeit to a lesser degree.) I'm not really one for classes, so rely heavily on books and online resources. Unfortunately, one issue at least with BSL (which may not be the case with ASL) is the number of available resources.

Yeah, I'd be mostly satisfying my curiosity and using a lot of books. ASL does seem to have quite a lot of resources out there, and I've been watching some YouTube videos in sign for fun, so there's that advantage. However, I tend to learn my languages through reading, so the writing system thing is a limiting factor (only since I don't know any D/deaf people or people who know ASL).

I highly recommend that you learn about the culture & history surrounding the D/deaf community of whichever sign language you chose to study. For ASL and American Deaf people, the context is extremely important for understanding your interactions. I'd imagine this is true (perhaps to varying degrees) in other signing communities as well.

Thanks for the advice! Actually, a lot of my interest in ASL is from a fascination with Deaf culture and communities. I really liked Benny Lewis's video on Gallaudet University (for people who don't know, the only Deaf university in the US where everyone can sign) (bah, I don't know how to embed links so here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCotgGSjxEk).

[solocricket]

One thing that was uniquely challenging was the lack of a standardized writing system for sign languages. I ended up learning ASLwrite (created by a Deaf man) to take notes with; it also helped me to learn about the possible hand shapes and motions systematically, sort of like learning the IPA helps with learning a language's phonology.

Wow, I just looked at ASLwrite, and I just have to say that it's one cool writing system!

[arthaey]

Wow, I just looked at ASLwrite, and I just have to say that it's one cool writing system!

I know, right?? It's nice to have another "fan" of ASLwrite here on the forum, even if you're more of a potential fan at this point.

But I know other people who are not fans in the least — including at least one well-informed linguist I respect who has studied a little bit about writing systems for sign languages. So it's not for everyone… But both the writing system itself and its community are definitely for me.

[jennybenny25]

Hello

I've nearly finished level 2 BSL and find it easier than spoken language

I'm a visual learner anyway

X

[MCK74]

I've also been curious about learning ASL. I used to know two sisters who learned ASL as part of their language requirement at college.

My dad's doctor had an appointment with a deaf person that he was signing to before my dad's appointment. After the doctor got finished with the deaf person the doctor said he was going to keep signing all night.

[Star1]

(does one "speak" a sign language?

Signers, not speakers. You sign the language.

I also like ASL and ASLwrite.

Aside from that, Nicaraguan Sign Language is fascinating. It was invented by Nicaraguan teenagers "out of thin air" in the 1980s. It is written with a different system.

From wikipedia (I cut some parts out of it):

Before the 1970s, there was no deaf community in Nicaragua. Deaf people were largely isolated from each other and mostly used simple home sign systems and gesture ('mímicas') to communicate with their families and friends, though there were several cases of idioglossia among deaf siblings.[3] ...In 1980, a vocational school for deaf adolescents was opened in the area of Managua called Villa Libertad. By 1983 there were over 400 deaf students enrolled in the two schools. Initially, the language program emphasized spoken Spanish and lipreading, and the use of signs by teachers was limited to fingerspelling (using simple signs to sign the alphabet). The program achieved little success, with most students failing to grasp the concept of Spanish words. The children remained linguistically disconnected from their teachers, but the schoolyard, the street, and the school bus provided fertile ground for them to communicate with each other. By combining gestures and elements of their home-sign systems, a pidgin-like form and a creole-like language rapidly emerged. They were creating their own language. This "first-stage" pidgin has been called Lenguaje de Signos Nicaragüense (LSN) and is still used by many who attended the school at this time. Staff at the school, unaware of the development of this new language, saw the children's gesturing as mime and as a failure to acquire Spanish. Unable to understand what the children were saying to each other, they asked for outside help. In June 1986, the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education contacted Judy Kegl, an American Sign Language linguist from MIT. As Kegl and other researchers began to analyze the language, they noticed that the young children had taken the pidgin-like form of the older children to a higher level of complexity, with verb agreement and other conventions of grammar. This more complex sign language is now known as Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua (ISN).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language

It is written with SignWriting.

http://nicaraguansignlanguageprojects.org/Links___SignWriting.php

I also think Martha's Vineyard Sign Language is fascinating, but unfortunately it became extinct and is mainly undocumented. That language was interesting because the whole island used it, not just the deaf.

By the 18th century there was a distinct Chilmark Sign Language, which was later (19th century) influenced by French Sign Language, forming Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (19th and 20th centuries). From the late 18th to the early 20th century, virtually everyone on Martha's Vineyard possessed some degree of fluency in the local sign language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha's_Vineyard_Sign_Language