ASL Students: Be honest, your reason???

Reason for wanting to learn ASL

  • My friends are doing it, I want to do it too!

    Votes: 1 1.6%

  • Watching others sign is so cool!

    Votes: 10 15.6%

  • Sounds more fun than learning Spanish or French

    Votes: 8 12.5%

  • To be able to communicate with a deaf person

    Votes: 32 50.0%

  • Other - will explain below

    Votes: 47 73.4%
  • Total voters
    64
  • Poll closed .
I have a cousin and an aunt that are deaf. The cousin is younger but growing up my aunt would come to events but no one really talked to her much. I would try to communicate with her and she could understand me pretty well because she is incredible at lip reading but I always had a hard time understanding her. She was sort of a mystery to me and so I usually hung out with her and tried to learn more about her. so I grew up with an interest in ASL but was never encouraged. Now I am older and I want to get to know her better and try to open the rest of my family's eyes before my cousin gets older and resents the family for not even taking baby steps to meet her halfway.
 
Personal reason: I have several Deaf friends, and I want to improve communication with them.
Academic/professional reason: My research is on "Deaf Culture(s)", and it seems quite clear to me that the only way to truly understand people is to speak their language.
 
Well, I had a friend in middle school who was hoh and taught me a few signs...later on I got a job at a cafe and had a deaf regualr who came in everyday and typed what he wanted on his cell phone then held it up so i could see it. He would look at the register for his total, pay and left.

Then one day (after studying for like a week!) I signed to him "Nice to see you again, how are you?" and his face just lit up completely!!! Even though im sure i looked like a fool, he was happy that someone cared to learn to communicate with him. That made me want to learn it more.

Less again...i had kids shortly after and didnt keep up with it, but since Switched At Birth came on, i am determined to finally really learn ASL

sorry this ran long...
 
Lots of reasons for me. My first intro to ASL was in elementary school when we learned a few songs with some signs. I thought it was really amazing, but I had no clue at the time that I could learn more, I just waited around for another opportunity at school, that never presented itself. In junior high, we had an ASL club that met after school, but I wasn't allowed to stay late, so I never got to participatel. In high school, we had ASL classes, but by then I already had a few years of spanish under my belt, so I felt like I should just stick with that (and didn't, our spanish teacher at the high school was scheevy, ick). I homeschool my own children now (8, 5, 3, and 1) and we have been buying Signing Time videos and incorporating them into our homework. My two daughters (5 and 1) are especially interested in it, and my 5 year old is pushing for us to learn more so that we can be fluent.
We learned a few signs when my 5yo was a baby, and taught them to her. I'll never forget her signing "more" at the speed of light when she wanted more of something delicious. We also taught our oldest the signs too, and then taught our next two babies.
Signing Time has been a great tool for our family to learn signs, and I've also been using an online signing dictionary (I've probably got close to 200 signs now in the last few weeks), but I want to learn sentence structure now. So we're looking at options for classes. I may try to get certified to teach baby signs through Signing Time Academy to start with and take the online courses they suggest. I can't do any classes in a school because my husband is about to start Bible school and I don't want to be away from my kids. I want this to be a family affair for sure.
My husband also works with a deaf man (he has hearing aides and can hear and speak some, so I guess that would be HoH? His wife is profoundly deaf, as far as I know their 3 young kids are all hearing) and we'd like to be more friendly with them and cultivate a relationship with them.
We've felt like God is calling us to the mission field, but in what way...we aren't sure yet (hence the Bible school). We thought at first that maybe God would take us to a foreign country, so we are also learning spanish (though it's sinking in MUCH more slowly than ASL, even though I took 4 years of it as a kid...and we tried learning Czech too for a while). ASL seems to be coming surprisingly easy to me though (which honestly shocks me), so I'm exploring if this might be the arena God is calling us to. My daughter declared today that maybe God would bless us with a deaf baby (by birth or adoption) someday.
In addition to understanding sentence structure and the nuances that would help us communicate properly and respectfully, we also want to understand the culture.
 
i have to learn it through my job but i really want to learn it. it is really neat because i talk alot with my hands anyways, but now i can have a better way of communicating with my hands.
 
I have CAPD and will soon be learning BSL (British Sign Language) so as to improve communication with my wife and children... Actually, I don't need to sign at all. They do. I just need to be able to interpret it :)
 
I want to become a speech pathologist when I'm older and knowing sign language is very helpful. I would research about the deaf culture and I want to know more about it. I take a class in school and i love it
 
bsl communicate, when in london use it everyday at deaf club and other people,Now live an area very little for deaf. use with son,daughter, daughterinlaw grandson is bringing up with it
 
bness37 said:
I agree with with many deaf people that do not like that many people try to learn ASL simply because they think it looks cool, but if the motive of learning ASL is genuine then I think it is a great thing. Those of us that are hearing will never fully understand deaf culture, but I think its important that we try, keeping in mind that we are outsiders.
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I think it's fine for hearing people to learn ASL just because they think it's cool. I don't think French people get pissed that English speakers learn French for the cool factor, so why would deaf? Learning anything is good.:thumb:


I'm hearing and I never think about being an outsider just because I'll never fully understand Deaf culture. Deaf are just people, not a clique that wants to remain separate from the world like a cult or something.:laugh2: I love the people here on Alldeaf, but I'd never treat them like they're fragile and thin-skinned. They deserve to be treated just like everyone else, and the smacks upside the head come with the hugs. :P
 
When I was a teenager my first job was at a Burger King around the corner from the city's deaf school. A close family friend had a deaf brother who would bring really really hot friends with him to parties.
It became frustrating not to be able to communicate with these variety of people around me. I felt like the odd one out and idiot because of it.
 
I wanna learn ASL because one day is as watching a YouTube video about signing and deaf people and someone made a very harsh comment so then a HOH person or deaf person made a response and said "try muting the video and figuring out what is being said with no sound". I tried it and realized that this was something different. And I would like to understand as much as I can about the deaf community. It is interesting and more deep as anything I've ever really seen.
 
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