cental34 said:
I got into a conversation yesterday with a friend and coworker about ASL yesterday at work. Now before I get into this, let me say this about him. He is a very smart individual, one of the smartest people I know, but he is very insensitive, and one sided. He always gets a kick out of ASL syntax. He loves using it because he thinks it is speech that would be used by "retards." Like I said, he is insensitive. Now we got into it, and he argued that ASL is is not a real language because it has no written form, it does not use tenses, and at times it is hard to get points across because of this. He think it is not a fully developed language because of this. I didn't give him a debate, because I'm not educated enough on the subject to answer for myself. I'd like to hear some responses to his statements. Do you agree, disagree? Why?
Thought I'd jump in on this one too
I appologise in advance ... I tend to write essays.
Cental34 -
Ummm if I remember correctly you do relay ??? so would I be correct that your co-worker is also a CA ???
I've spent a lot of time, writing back and forth to deaf ASLers - and yeah , sometime the engligh can be hard to understand - it's really important to remember , and remind others that for many of us , using written english is a 2nd or 3rd language ( personally I tend to think of speechreading as a seperate 'language', of it's own... even though I know that's technically not accurate)
I think we tend to read better than write. It's much easier to read a 2nd language, and go look up the words you don't "get" , or guess at the context , than it is to try to create the words ( phrases) from scratch.
I primarily usually use a TTY for "important things" such as solving issues with the bank, or doctor, or other things that can be fairly stressful - and even though I had enough hearing as a child to aquire English fairly "normally" .. when I get stressed out, it's my english that gets messed up first ( not my ASL). I'm sure that there have been a number of people on the other end of my relay calls thinking " what a stupid .... "
ASL is a true language:
*It has it's own grammar structure
*it does have tenses, just not in the same way that it's done in English
*it has it's own form of poetry, and stories.
*There's an arguement to be made that ASL does have a written form via "signwriting" - though I don't know anyone that uses it :roll:
Of course there are a number of languages that either have no written form , or have an artifically created written system.
PSE, SEE, SEEII etc are not Languages , but instead a visual "mode" or "code" of english, in much the same way that braille a manually coded version of printed text, but not it's own written language.
Hmmm about it being hard to get the point across in ASL ... I think that's a fluency issue more than anything else. As with all languages some things just are really had to translate - something that might be a simple thing in ASL , could be a complicated thing in English , or vise versa. ASL has expressions like "OUT" ( meaning , feeling left out of something, and not being able to follow etc) , and "TRAIN GO SORRY" ... both of which I think are MUCH easier to understand in ASL , than English. English has a number of things that are hard to translate into ASL though - figures I can't think of anything right now though :roll:
It's important to realise that these issues exist in all languages , not just ASL to English ... expressions like "needles in a haystack" translate into " ants in a log" in french ( I think I translated that rcorrectly)
I hope this helps a bit .... I'd love to yack more about it if you're up to it ( either publically , or PM)
