How can one speak DEAF-a condition?
aside: notwithstanding I am bilateral DEAF I speak English-that hasn't changed.
Ha, Botti said deaf, I said Deaf, and you said DEAF. This should be an interesting conversation. I say that with sarcasm and fear. But the rest of this post is serious.
Anyway, it's not about the condition. Sorry if what I said seemed to suggest that. Can't speak for Botti. And wouldn't if I could because she would hurt me. But what *I* was refering to (and sorry that I wasn't more precise, but I have this problem already of writing these novel posts) was as follows.
So this is about language as used by people who learned (and lets just make this in the U.S. for simplicity) ASL as their first language, and and English as a (usually) second language. Unless they go as far as fully conforming to standard English usage, there are certain differences you might start to notice. I don't have a full enough mastery of the subject to be certain of all the details, but my feeling is that it's not the same as what I would call a broken English. It's more something like "language with many components of English, but informed by ASL as a first language". And since many deaf people who have ASL as their first language have come together to form a community, and these days sometimes interact via typed messages, there are places where this way of communicating can survive and even flourish. And so that usage becomes something specifically recognizable. It's related to English, but sometimes there are differences in meaning from what you might expect from a particular word or phrase.
For example, ASL is big on active voice, not so much passive. So if you're dating a culturally Deaf person, and they say "I lose you now
", do you think they're sad because they think you're breaking up with them, or do you think they're breaking up with you?
Another (more from the deaf experience/culture): If a hearing English user refers to someone as more extremely Hard of Hearing than someone else, who can hear more? What if a culturaly Deaf person makes the same comparison?
And then there are just so many radical differences between the grammars. I'm seeing other differences that I'm sure stem from that, but since I'm still learning I can't really dive into those yet. All I can tell you is that I feel like I'm doing something really good for my brain by trying to wrap my head around this stuff. Starting to climb out of some truly miserable ruts.
Ok, so sorry if I in any way made you feel that because you are deaf/DEAF, that the language you use would necessarily be anything other than English. Didn't mean that at all. I hope this clears things up, but can't imagine it actually does. On the plus side, I'm coming to really love subjects I don't yet have all figured out