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Kids get named "bear" all the time; the name "Arthur" means bear.

When I do historic re-enactment and blacksmithing demonstrations at museums and county fairs I always post this sign at my area.

Sounds like he was doing a Deaf version of counting out-loud.

Yup, that's exactly what young English speaking children think when they first hear the term. It has to be explained to them that it's also a style of music too.

But it's non-conceptual for young native English speakers as well. If they can get "Rock and Roll" doesn't literally mean "heterogeneous minerals and tumbling" but a music style as well, I would think ASL users can figure it out too. Many words and signs have multiple (even disparate)...

I was watching the news, and the subtitles said "Palestinians insist there should be no juice in Gaza". I was like what?! It took me a while to figure out it should have been "no JEWS in Gaza"; the fact they were showing refugee kids drinking water was just coincidence.

There is a time and a place for IM/netspeak/l33tsp33k. It was designed to be used when limited characters are allowed or there is limited time available to reply; such as IM'ing. Forums are different. No one is breathlessly waiting in realtime for your reply, nor is there a character limit...

Deafness just doesn't compare to those types of disabilities. From what I've seen deafness seems to be more of a annoyance than truly disabling. More like being left-handed or shorter than average. Quite frankly I'm very happy that my granddaughter is left-handed. And if I had to choose, I'd...

Excellent post Paris! Not all "ASL" programs are created equal. Unfortunately, the people overseeing the creation, listing, and authorization of these classes often don't know enough about real ASL to know if the teachers are meeting the course descriptions. OR the course descriptions are...

Remember ASL is not a word for word copy of English. One sign can equal many English words depending on speed, direction, and facial expression. Because of that, and the fact that English is liberally sprinkled with idioms it's important to bear in mind the concept behind the English you're...

My friend who went to American School for the Deaf signed it this way: Non-dominant "b" hand horizontal. Dominant grips non-dom fingers and flexes back and forth.

Our first ASL teacher (a CODA) indicated although we might see Deaf people refer to each other as "deafies" it was very rude for hearing people to do so. She explained this was a common derogatory term in use by hearing people from the late 1880's through the mid 1960's. Apparently, as the...

The G & L community often joke that Bi people are "learning disabled". Maybe you could invent a sign that does something with that. :)

Interesting! Do you know if the Deaf person requested it from the dealer or did they do it because it was just part of taking care of the customer? From other comments around it seems like this sort of thing is quite rare; that many businesses never give it a second thought nor are willing to pay.

You know your story is incredibly similar to the reason why I decided to learn Sign. It didn't seem to matter what job I was working at I was regularly running into Deaf people. Although I didn't mind using pen and paper to communicate, I got to thinking it'd just be a whole lot easier to...

Thank you all for your assistance, that helps immensely.

Every summer I do a couple of blacksmithing demonstrations at local county fairs in my area (Albany, NY and Rensselaer, NY). At both fairs I get a handful of Deaf people who stop by and I describe what I'm doing and answer their questions in ASL. Recently it's come to my attention that one...

Are there specific signs for Mr. Mrs. Ms., etc? Or are they just fingerspelled before the person's last name?

When I was first out of college I worked a bunch of typical retail jobs. As fate would have it, it seemed like I was always running into deaf customers. Writing back and forth was ok, but it really seemed to me that ASL would just be so much more efficient. But of course time slipped away and...

That's interesting! One of my first experiences with deaf/hoh was while I was on the ambulance (before I learned ASL). The patient was having a horrible time understanding what was going on and then when I got there she announced: "Him [pointing to me]. I can hear him; he HAS a mustache."...