To sign or not to sign, and in what language?

[Whittuck]

Hi All,

We're the parents of a soon to be three year old here in Belgium with severe to profound hearing loss. She's been making really good progress in spoken Norwegian and English (our two maternal languages which we speak at home) and she also gets some small exposure to French as her kindergarten is bilingual English/French.

But despite this good progress and our (perhaps normal?) hopes that she won't/shouldn't need sign language in the future, we don't want to disadvantage her in any way by not giving her access to sign and learning it ourselves to some extent (the extent of which is still to be decided). Not least we'd like another means to communicate with her when she doesn't have he HAs in and in the event she loses/breaks them etc. Not to mention just for her in the future should her hearing deteriorate in the future.

So the main dilemma is that we're in a foreign country, one which has both French/Belgian (LSFB) and Dutch/Belgian (VGT) sign languages. Which differ as far as we can tell somewhat from French sign language (LSF) and Dutch sign language (NGT) to varying extents. And we could equally go down the route of Norwegian sign language (NTS) or British sign language (BSL) as me and my wife are both bilingual Norwegian/English. My apologies for the acronyms!

So maybe some of you can start to see where we might have a confusing choice to make? As we live here in Belgium for the moment, our daughters sign fluent peers will likely be LSFB, but that said we may also move to Norway or elsewhere in the not to distant future, in which case that might not be the best language to learn, not to mention she will not learn the syntax or grammar of spoken French (as we're not actively trying to expose her to French in her daily school/kindergarten life) so maybe that might be a bit of a stretch for her at such a young age?

That said she won't have much exposure to BSL or NTS here (as there are for all intensive purposes no communities using them here that we could take part in) but we could do our best to take part in some courses and other school type things in either England or Norway and go down the road in one of those languages? Then at least she'll have a foundation for the syntax and grammar in those languages which I gather goes somewhat hand in hand with the spoken versions? Please correct me if i'm wrong on any counts.

Is it the case in any of your opinions, that whatever we might try to learn (our daughter and ourselves) that this would anyway be a good foundation should she choose to go further in later life? Even if she changed to one of the other options later on? Or should we go with one of the spoken languages she already has a foundation in, so that she can at least see it paired up with that? And in that case she can branch out into other languages as she chooses (or in the event we stay longterm in Belgium?

If she were hearing in Belgium we'd probably have sent her to a French speaking kindergarten and then she'd have had 3 spoken languages day to day. But the centre we previously went to already didn't want her to have 2 spoke languages in her daily life (despite the fact that she is progressing well in both Norwegian and English now much to their surprise). We are however hesitant to get her more involved in French at this age as perhaps 3 such different languages might be a little much for her to learn and master at such a young age. We don't want to overload her at such a young age.

But we're hesitating about the sign language choice as regards her spoken language foundation. Would it be weird to learn a sign language you had no foundation in? Bearing in mind the people she might learn it from likely won't speak English (to say nothing of Norwegian) so they won't be able to translate across the spoken/sign divide as it were. In which case it could be super slow or frustrating for her?

Questions questions... we'd be grateful for any perspectives! I hope at least some of that made any sense.

Thanks in advance,

Charlie

 

[Bottesini]

It is possible to learn one sign language early on, and then learn another.

Just like spoken languages. If you are going to be living where you are for much of her childhood, the prevailing language there should be what she should learn.

If you anticipate a move in the near future, maybe you could start on the sign language of that country.

I don't know how it works in Belgium, but is it possible for you to get an early intervention specialist who could work with your whole family on learning to sign?

 

[Whittuck]

It is possible to learn one sign language early on, and then learn another.

Just like spoken languages. If you are going to be living where you are for much of her childhood, the prevailing language there should be what she should learn.

If you anticipate a move in the near future, maybe you could start on the sign language of that country.

I don't know how it works in Belgium, but is it possible for you to get an early intervention specialist who could work with your whole family on learning to sign?

Hey Bottesini

Hmm, we'll probably know in the next year or so what our near future might look like. Then we could indeed make a pertinent choice as regards what language to learn.

So you don't think it might be a little hard for her to get into LSFB with no real french foundation, with someone who can't speak to her in either of her "mother tongues"?

I'll ask at the new centre we're going to in January about some sort of help they might be able to offer us in getting started, good idea.

Cheers,

 

[Bottesini]

Hey Bottesini

Hmm, we'll probably know in the next year or so what our near future might look like. Then we could indeed make a pertinent choice as regards what language to learn.

So you don't think it might be a little hard for her to get into LSFB with no real french foundation, with someone who can't speak to her in either of her "mother tongues"?

I'll ask at the new centre we're going to in January about some sort of help they might be able to offer us in getting started, good idea.

Cheers,

No I don't think it would be hard.

No matter the country, signed languages are really separate languages from the spoken language, and should be taught voice off.

No reason for the person teaching to speak to her at all.

 

[Gobae]

So you don't think it might be a little hard for her to get into LSFB with no real french foundation, with someone who can't speak to her in either of her "mother tongues"?

A French foundation is irrelevant to LSFB since signed languages are totally independent from spoken language. In fact they have their own linguistic tree.

 

[deafdyke]

Charlie, You are an AMAZING parent to think about Sign! Maybe a good idea might be to inquire what type of Sign the Deaf schooling offers......Sign language is an AWESOME second language for HOH kids. One thing you COULD do is maybe enroll her in a Sign using Deaf preschool for once or twice a week, so she could learn by immersion.... Enrollment in a dhh program, even as a supplementary thing is GREAT for even oral/HOH kids I'm not too sure how the system is over there, but here in the US it's not too unusal for oral kids to learn Sign as a second language. You could argue that you want a good solid base in Deaf education, and for her to learn Sign as a secondary language, so she can function both with and without her HAs/CIs......