Thread on #Disability and #ASL. When I was a kid, my first exposure to deaf communication was a manual alphabet poster in a nearby public library. I think I was staring at it while waiting for my mom to find novels for herself. I filed it away.

Flash forward 8 years. At @oberlincollege my best friend knew the alphabet mostly, so we refreshed our collective knowledge and used it to communicate across the room at loud parties. It worked a treat.

Oberlin had a student taught class in ASL out of the Experimental College (Exco). A mutual friend took that class and we cribbed signs from her as well as trying to learn how to say dirty things - important or at least entertaining in any language.

I took a year off college at 19 and in addition to writing code, I worked a volunteer job at a rescue squad. One of the other volunteers was a senior in high school and asked me to her prom. I wasn't dating her. She just wanted a date.

The prom was at Governor Livingston High School in Berkeley Heights, NJ which has a Deaf and Hard of Hearing program (right @MarkKriegsman?) and there were several deaf students there and one approached me and signed, so I did a quick 'h' 'i'.

She signed, I think, asking me if I signed. I knew enough to sign 'sorry' and 'no I know little' and spelled out 'I can spell though'. She asked me to dance, so I accepted. It was for 'Stairway to Heaven' which I knew was a faux pas for my date (who didn't mind) and hers.

I spotted her clearly *very angry* date and motioned to him and she gave me such a perfect eye roll. I figured out how one-sided that relationship was real fast. As limited as my knowledge was, I was happy to be able to do some communication. I wonder what happened to her.

Flash forward 18 years. My daughter is born with surprise Down syndrome. She started to speak on time and our case worker said we should get her into speech therapy immediately. Why? She's talking?! Because it will help her. Her ST suggested we start using sign as well as speech.

Turns out language development is coupled to whatever means of expression you use so if you double up on expression and reception, you improve language. Build the strengths. She suggested that we look at @signingtime which we did.

My daughter started school with a vocabulary that was age appropriate, just not spoken. Every time we needed extra help (nanny or manny), we tried to hire someone who knew sign. It was at this point that I learned about the difference between ASL...

Signed Exact English (SEE) and Pidgin Signed English (PSE). SEE is a waste of time. It's inefficient and ponderous. We didn't have a good way to learn full ASL, so we settled on PSE. It's English word order with ASL signs. We settled on that since we could use sign...

as a kinesthetic highlighter for the spoken word. Around this time, we hired @lxgino as a manny and he did a grat job with Alice. IIRC his grandparents are deaf and he learned a lot from them. Alice learned so much from him and a lot of it stuck.

Flash forward 14 years. Alice is in high school which had ASL as a foreign language. Even though she is in mostly a special ed program, she was eligible, so she took the class. She did great. We met her teacher at the end of year IEP meeting and she...

was surprised by how much my spouse and I could sign. With language, my spouse is reticent. She doesn't want to be wrong. I assume I'm going to make mistakes so I'm fearless. It's about communication for me. She told us that coming up, they had an assignment to pick a...

name sign. ASL names are part of deaf culture. My understanding is that you only get a name sign from a deaf person. I explained that Alice has a "home" name sign, which is a cultural practicality. We needed a way to address our daughter.

I explained her home name sign was an 'a' signed to the side with a little shake to it because Alice was a wiggly baby. She laughed and signed 'perfect - that's her name sign'. I can't explain how touching that was. It's special and it makes me choke up as a parent.

We hired a PCA for Alice a year ago. She is deaf. We took it as a challenge and an opportunity. She works well with Alice and Alice mostly speaks to her but she does sign to her and sometimes interprets what her PCA is signing, which is cool.

Funny thing though. My spouse now has a name sign but I don't. I'm just 'dad'. It's disappointing, but it's not my choice. In the process, though I've learned the ASL signs for 'compiler' (my job is to write one), 'justice', and a bunch of other signs.

My ASL grammar is improving too, although it's still mostly PSE. Her PCA reads lips, so I speak and sign and spell. And here's where the crux of this very long thread is. Today, I was packing up cards to forward to...

@BlairBraverman who will deliver them part way by dogsled. Alice's PCA wanted to know what I was doing. Reader, somehow I was able to explain dog sled mail in sign alone and was able to explain who Blair is and how I found out about her.

I could sign the title of her book "Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube" (which you should absolutely read), except for spelling 'Goddamn' (now I know how to sign it) and to also sign "Winterdance" by Gary Paulsen. Her PCA loves dogs and the moment I had spelled...

I-d-i-t-a she knew I meant Iditarod. And her we are. Here's where I took you: from me as a kid seeing a poster in a library in about 1976 to now in 2020, trying to explain about sled dog mail and ugly dogs to my daughter's PCA.

The point is that the world is an amazing place and you never know how what you learn today will be useful 30 years later. ASL is a fabulous language. It's like visual kanji. I often laugh when I learn a new sign and it makes TOTAL SENSE to me.

Learn things. Learn languages. Use them. It's about communication. /Fin.