Powerfish said:
Probably a dumb question.
I learned a little ASL a few years ago (can still say cool, thanks and sack of sh*t) A friend of mine was leanring it and would practice alot so I kind of picked it up.
I know that ASL is a bit different from English (like no articles etc) but why do ppl say they don't speak English. I'm assuming deaf folks read books etc. But why the distinction?
It doesn't sound like you learned ASL. You did what I did when I started. You learned some of the vocabulary of ASL, maybe enough to allow you to say a few things or perhaps to have a short conversation. But you signed in the order of English sentence structure. You never learned ASL.
A lot of people say they "learned ASL" when they mean they learned a few words. That's like someone who speaks Taco Bell Spanish saying they learned Spanish. No offense intended. It's something deaf people are told, it seems, day-in and day-out.
Deaf people say they don't speak English because, in truth, they prefer to use their native language, their mother language, which is ASL. Why? Because it's easier, like English is easier for English speakers. It's just like someone from Mexico saying, "No entedendo Englais!" [I don't understand English] Deaf people are, principally, a "language-minority". That's like, say, the Mexican people here where I live. There are lots and lots of Mexican people here in Southern California that don't speak English. They live and work here every day of their lives, right in the middle of a "language-majority" of English speakers. So if you're out in my local community and you ask someone a question in English, they'll say right away, "No habla Englais." [I don't speak English] The Deaf are a languaguage minority just like any other language minority in the world. Always remember that and you won't find it surprising when a deaf person tells you they don't speak English.
You see, lots of people say they know ASL because they use the signs from the language. But they're not signing ASL until they use the "rules". Roughly speaking (and I mean VERY roughly), ASL has a chronological order to its expression and a strict and demanding visual logic. So an ASL sentence might begin like this: Yesterday, I shopped all day long.
Remember, I'm trying to "approximate" ASL, something that is near impossible to do with written language. Notice the sentence begins with "Yesterday". That's important because one of the BIG rules of ASL is that the sentence has to have a logic to it that makes sense "visually". "Yesterday" established the verb tense, in this case, Past tense. That means the entire conversation's context is established as "in the past" and specifically "yesterday". The time of the story, "yesterday" will not be changed until the signer changes it. He or she can now talk for an hour and the story remains in the past tense until it is changed again by the speaker. The most likely direction of change is to Present or Future tense. Why? Because of the RULE about chronological order. Past, Present, Future. That's a Very rough idea of an ASL rule.
Emphatics are a whole different situation. In English we say things like, "I was extremely upset." In ASL the use of a single sign conveys the meaning of both "extremely" and "upset" and it conveys both concepts simultaneously. In English, suppose your father told you to "Go clean your room, now." It would depend on his tone of voice when he used the word "now" that would tell you how serious he was. ASL has that same capability. It can convey many, many shades of "now" in that context; a request, a suggestion, a warning, a command, a demand. It's all in the way the sign "now" is used.
That's what the "distintion" is. You're not using ASL. You're using signed English or ASL signs in English word order. That's a whole different world away from ASL. That's broken English.
We sign, not speak. 
We don't use our voices as our primary tool of language. 
