I'm taking an 8-week community course taught by a fun, amazing LDA (who also teaches intensive for-credit university courses). My notes are covered in stick people and weird attempts at drawing hand shapes...can't wait for my brain to stop trying to approach this like other languages I've studied.
I'm a hearie, but also a visual learner who thinks more in pictures than in words. I have ADD, so often it's very difficult for me to absorb what a person is saying if I look at them while they speak, or I have to keep my brain slightly busy with another task in order to pay attention. So of course, ASL is a wonderful change of pace. Right after my 8-wk course ends I'm moving and I plan to take formal ASL classes at a college in my new city.
When I was a little kid in Catholic gradeschool, we learned FS and a couple of songs in ASL, for no particular reason. I'm finding now that a few of the signs were either wrong or perhaps they've just changed (it's been over 10 years) but it was still a good starting point.
I have a bachelor of science in linguistics and have studied many foreign languages for fun. My uni didn't offer ASL, but I did learn a lot about Deaf people and deaf language acquisition in my neurolinguistics courses. My current line of work has allowed me to interact with a number of Deaf people and every time this happens I wish I knew ASL to communicate with them.
