from a hear-er

Great post, allykat. I agree with Shel90 that we need open mind hearing people around here...

Herzlich Willkommen in AD :thumb:
 
anyway, thank you guys for this forum. there is a deaf woman who delivers supplies at my office. ive always felt uncomfortable with her, as im not sure what to do, how much she can hear etc... on monday, i think ill just ask her.
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hey, am I the only one that's okay with this? Well I think you might not have made your intentions clear or stated it properly. Yeah, asking her how well she can hear/her degree of hearing loss would be a no, especially right off the bat. but it's perfectly acceptable to at least ask someone how you should communicate with them - if they read lips, or if they want you to speak more slowly/clearly, or write on a notepad, etc. But you should at least have a better intention than to just satisfy your curiosity about her hearing loss. if that's all you want to know, i suppose you could just ask her, "hey for future reference, how would you like me to communicate with you?" or something along those lines. but of course, introduce yourself first, common courtesy, small talk, blah blah the whole shebang. I'm sure you already planned on that though.
 
allykat said:
for the majority of us, the only experience we have with deafness is that movie about helen keller.
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:rofl: That might be true, but it is funny. The movie people say to me more is "Children of a Lesser God". Wow, am I sick of hearing about that movie.

allykat said:
it never occurs to most people that there can be a level of deafness or that a deaf person could *gasp!* talk. so, keep that in mind when a hearing person is acting like an idiot when trying to communicate with you.
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Yep, I do. But sometimes the person acting like an idiot is just an idiot. There are weird, funny, obnoxious, stupid hearing people and weird, funny, obnoxious stupid deaf or HoH people. I usually find folks friendly and funny. Or at least I chose to see them this way (who knows what they are actually saying? This is one big advantage to not understanding everything all the time ;).

About asking someone how much they can hear, I kind of hate that question. It's not offensive, but I don't know how to answer that. I'm not sure what others hear and what I am missing. "Less than you"? "Almost nothing, according to my audiologist"? "It depends on how interesting what is being said"? The conversation is OK or it is not, and everyone can see that. We just work it out (or not) as best we can.

No offense taken, but I'm hard to offend. :giggle:
 
heres a weird question... ive always wondered why American Sign Language is American... are there other forms? what do they teach in foreign signing schools? is there French sign language, or Spanish? just something i was wondering about.
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yes, there are lots of other sign languages around the world. ASL is most closely related to french sign language, as this is where ASL was adopted from. In england they may speak the same language americans do, but their sign is completely different.

but just like the same language may be spoken in several different countries, the same sign language may be used as well, it all depends on the area.
 
Well put, Allykat!

I wish there are more people like you, understanding our situations of being deaf. That goes the same to blind, handicapped, endless lists of disabilities. I have seen enough ignorant people all over the country, perhaps all over the world.
 
pek1 said:
The only question, kat, that's silly, is the one that's not asked. :D There are other forms of sign language, such as SEE, which is Signing Exact English, which is precisely what it sounds like.
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I had a question about SEE. I have never heard of this before I read it here. Is SEE signing words in the order in which hearies speak english?

I am currently having a little trouble signing in ASL. I keep signing in english order (I guess thats what you would call it?) and have to re-sign things many times (its my first semester though!). I tried to ask my instructor if I would offend a deaf person if I signed in english order instead of ASL. From what I gathered, he said it would be okay but ASL would be preferred. I will learn ASL better as time goes by but until then I know I'll be messing up a lot and mixing up the order of my sentences. How do you all feel about this?
 
Aimra said:
I had a question about SEE. I have never heard of this before I read it here. Is SEE signing words in the order in which hearies speak english?
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from what I know... basically, yes... but also with things like little words: to, and, the, is, etc. and even adding possessive form to words... like for example if you wanted to sign "kim's hat" you'd fingerspell Kim and do this little apostrophe-S sort of thing, then sign "hat". Well I guess that's one way to put it. Nyeeeeeehh.
 
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