I posted this as a poll over on LJ, first, because I have a paid account there
And can actually post polls. But I thought maybe people who read DW primarily might have missed it, and I think some of those people have a special interest in signed languages.
So:
So, on July 29th, I enrolled in Signing Online, a for-payment Internet Course for learning conversational American Sign Language (ASL). I decided to go this route because, unlike free sites that will show you a small video, telling you the meaning of a single sign, these courses actually quiz you on how well you understand complete sentences. Granted, it's not as thorough as a real university course, where someone is there to tell you if you actually signed "blow job" instead of "Special." or one of the versions of "F*** You" instead of "Be careful."
But the fall semester of the local community college where ASL is taught was starting too soon for me to feel comfortable jumping in with both feet, and, as I've already studied ASL, I wasn't sure how much I'd be reinventing the wheel. Besides, I can do this on my own, insomnia-driven schedule.
There are forty individual classes, broken into four ten-class "courses," and I've been cramming a bit, doing a class a day, more or less (That's why my posting here has dropped off). This intensity has brought up a lot of memories and thoughts, and I want to talk about them all, but I don't know where to start.
Here are the ideas I've been thinking about. Let me know which interests you most:
The bits about Deaf Culture that I remember from my university class lo, these many years ago
Sign Language in the brain, mostly from Oliver Sack's book Seeing Voices
My Isssues: Let me show you them (memories from childhood, and what shaped my attitudes about D/deafness)
Tech!Geek drool -- TTYs, Video Phones and Vibrating alarm clocks
YouTube videos of jokes told in ASL (I'll find versions of the jokes in English, too), so you can see what the language looks like
Wordplay and puns in ASL
A "Devil's-Advocate" essay on how spoken language is more primative and animalistic than signed language
So:
So, on July 29th, I enrolled in Signing Online, a for-payment Internet Course for learning conversational American Sign Language (ASL). I decided to go this route because, unlike free sites that will show you a small video, telling you the meaning of a single sign, these courses actually quiz you on how well you understand complete sentences. Granted, it's not as thorough as a real university course, where someone is there to tell you if you actually signed "blow job" instead of "Special." or one of the versions of "F*** You" instead of "Be careful."
But the fall semester of the local community college where ASL is taught was starting too soon for me to feel comfortable jumping in with both feet, and, as I've already studied ASL, I wasn't sure how much I'd be reinventing the wheel. Besides, I can do this on my own, insomnia-driven schedule.
There are forty individual classes, broken into four ten-class "courses," and I've been cramming a bit, doing a class a day, more or less (That's why my posting here has dropped off). This intensity has brought up a lot of memories and thoughts, and I want to talk about them all, but I don't know where to start.
Here are the ideas I've been thinking about. Let me know which interests you most:
The bits about Deaf Culture that I remember from my university class lo, these many years ago
Sign Language in the brain, mostly from Oliver Sack's book Seeing Voices
My Isssues: Let me show you them (memories from childhood, and what shaped my attitudes about D/deafness)
Tech!Geek drool -- TTYs, Video Phones and Vibrating alarm clocks
YouTube videos of jokes told in ASL (I'll find versions of the jokes in English, too), so you can see what the language looks like
Wordplay and puns in ASL
A "Devil's-Advocate" essay on how spoken language is more primative and animalistic than signed language