American Sign Language Class-Deaf Parenting
I decided to refresh my sign language skills and so I attended my first of nine American Sign Language (ASL) classes at Deaf, Inc last night. What a great diverse group! The teacher is Deaf and has already set the tone to make the class fun, and raised our interest in ASL and Deaf culture. He had an interpreter only for this first class.
The teacher shared information on the origin and structure of American Sign Language (ASL). Thomas Gallaudet was interested in sign language and went over to France and met with Clerc. ASL has a French structure i.e. Object, Verb, Adjective and Subject at the end which is quite different from English. The American School for the Deaf in CT was the first school for the Deaf. After that Thomas Gallaudet and Clerc started Gallaudet University in Washington D.C.
We learned of Deaf cultural rules. It is a visual world with the Deaf needing more personal space to communicate. American Sign Language is a language with gestures and fluid expression. The teacher mentioned how advanced technology is today for example with videophone versus TTY.
There were 14 students in the class. People were from different backgrounds and wanted to learn American Sign Language for a variety of reasons. During the introductions I explained that we wanted to empower Deaf people and in particular, hearing parents with Deaf children with our experience, who are going through what we went through when we learned that our son was Deaf. People were from different work backgrounds; speech therapist, working with disabilities, synagogue, church, early childhood education, nurse, human services provider, medical interpreter, and care giver. The students are from diverse ethnic backgrounds also; Brazil, India, Japan, African American, Asian, Indian and Caucasian. Two persons are experiencing hearing loss. One will be completely Deaf soon and his doctor recommended that he learned American Sign Language (ASL). The other was in an accident and lost his hearing for a period of time. Due to that experience he is trying to learn signs so he can communicate with a Deaf child were he lives.
I was the only person in class with a Deaf child. It is amazing to see how people are so aware of the Deaf community and want to be able to communicate with them. This is so different from 26 years ago. The majority of the people in the classes then were people with a child or relative that was Deaf. This is really exciting and I cannot wait for our future classes. We will learn to communicate in American Sign Language (ASL) and tell people of our background, family and different experiences. This will be fun!
Written by: Alex Stephen
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User Comments
On September 28, 2009 at 12:31 pm
i live in a small town with no deaf children or adults,
my 6 year old son is deaf and we are doing the best we can with signs, but some signs are hard to find, is there a web site that can help with finding and showing signs if we type them in.
thank you.
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On September 28, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Deaf Parenting Contact Message!
1) Please contact your local (your home state) commission for the Deaf and hard of hearing and state association of the Deaf for taking ASL classes (physical attendances). Deaf ASL instructors will give you a lot of assistance and feedback. Also, you will feel more connection with other hearing classmates who are also hearing parents of Deaf children.
2) If you are not able to attend any ASL classes in your local area. ASL dictionary websites are available but does not guarantee for you to learn ASL fluently.
3) Please see a few websites below that might help.
1) http://asl.ms/
2) http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm
3) http://www.aslpro.com
Accent= Various sounds by voices (hearing people)
Dialect= Various signs by visual communication (Deaf people)
Note: Some signs are not same across the nation.
Good luck with your local search.
Thanks,
Larry
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On March 5, 2010 at 8:08 am
Mudras-Sign Language:
I am a professional Kathakali actor from India now I live in UK. Kathakali is the classical dance drama of Kerala south India. Kathakali combines music, dance, visual theatre and visual drama using a sign language called Mudras to make total theatre.
All the classical Indian dance and drama uses signed communicate as a first language. It is complete with an alphabet, sentence structure and vocabulary and more than 4000 years old. I have been developing this sign language for over 20 years because, unlike British Sign Language, or American Sign Language, it has never been passed on for use in everyday life.
I was inspired by the reaction of people who are profoundly deaf taking part in my workshops, how they were fascinated by a theatre that uses sign language, that all the hand movements are words and how they valued having an opportunity to learn a sign language from a different culture.
In the UK or Europe deaf sign language is now a recognized language and people who are deaf have an opportunity to integrate with the community. Unfortunately, a person born deaf in India has no opportunity to grow within the community and often isolated. That is why I started to develop the idea of combining the classical sign language of the performing of India, which they are familiar with, and a new sign language based on English. They can learn English, how to communicate through the internet and signed gestures.
I have recorded almost most 3,000 words that use the established structure of an alphabet, grammar, sentence structure and numbers like any other language.
I would like to establish this language within the deaf community in India as a language and instrument of learning. Before I do this I would like to invite a British sign language expert to look at my work. I would be interested to know if there is any potential to incorporate this language into BSL.
This language could be used to assist people to develop visual memory and, using my theories, learn the spoken language through signing.
I would like to continue this research and development of this work with the support of a university.
Kalamandalam Vijayakumar
DUSTIN
On September 10, 2010 at 2:10 pm
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