I am in ASL 1 at my college, and I have just a general question. My boyfriend is deaf, and I understand his signs with almost no problem(we have been together 5 years.) I can understand the instructor fine (because of course, she is going slow for the people who don't understand anything.) The problem I am having, and I don't know if it's me, or normal, or what! is that when someone else who is fluent signs to me, I don't get it about half the time. My boyfriend does NOT sign slower for me, so I know it isn't a speed issue. I am just wondering if it is normal, in the beginning, to have problems recognizing signs in conversations with people you are not familiar with? I really hope this made sense LOL
According with my experiences with my LSA teachers (always one hearing/one deaf) they alwasy said during the 3 years of the course, that, "we'll have to adapt to almost every deaf, since, everyone signs differently", also that "the signs we teach you here, are not the only ones, because most small social groups have their small derived dialects"
So, in way, you shoulnd't worry. You only need time to get the way of signing of each person
At least, from my experience.
