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Hi can you help me make this sound natural?

 
 
ryunin
 
Reply Wed 26 Jan, 2005 10:56 am
It would be great if anyone could tell me if there are any grammar mistakes and if not, if there is anything that sounds strange to a native speaker.


The role of Marcela opened the door to a new world for me - world of disabled people, hearing impaired people. The fact that I had a chance to make friends with some of them and that I could work with Mr Alan Ptacek, who taught me the sign language, reassured my opinion that it is us, hearing people, who are really handicapped. We can learn the sign language to better relate to the disabled - they do their best to understand others, but we don't. I took the role of Marcela as a challenge for my own life - to learn the sign language is similar to learning a new language. What makes things difficult is the fact that the signs differ from country to country, not to mention the different „accents" throughout various regions. The hearing impaired really appreciate any effort to understand them and they are very friendly. Lenka Sagulová, who plays the role of my daughter in the film, was a great source of inspiration to me. Particularly her sensitivity, concentration and her ability to observe things. Her mother contributed a lot too - she helped me to refine different signs during breaks: any little change of the gesture may lead to a totally different meaning.
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Wed 26 Jan, 2005 11:13 am
Hmm, two responses, one to content and one to grammar. (I'm deaf.) I'll start with just the grammar response.

Well no, one response comes from both places -- "hearing impaired" or "Deaf"? Which terminology do the people you are writing about prefer? As the point of this seems to be cultural sensitivity, that is pertinent.

Here are my suggested revisions, (I didn't touch "hearing impaired", your decision):

Quote:
The role of Marcela opened the door to a new world for me - the world of disabled people, hearing impaired people. This chance to make friends with some of them and work with Mr Alan Ptacek, who taught me American [?] Sign Language, confirmed my opinion that it is us, hearing people, who are really handicapped. We can learn sign language to better relate to the disabled - they do their best to understand others, but we don't.

I took the role of Marcela as a challenge. To learn sign language is the same as learning any other new language. What makes things difficult is the fact that the signs differ from country to country, not to mention the different "accents" throughout various regions.

The hearing impaired really appreciate any effort to understand them and they are very friendly. Lenka Sagulová, who plays the role of my daughter in the film, was a great source of inspiration to me. Particularly her sensitivity, her concentration, and her ability to observe things. Her mother contributed a lot too - she helped me to refine different signs during breaks. This was important because any little change of the gesture may lead to a totally different meaning.


There are other changes I would make but those are the main ones to keep your own words but make the passage flow/ follow basic grammar rules.
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ryunin
 
  1  
Reply Wed 26 Jan, 2005 11:46 am
Thank you so much for your help.

Very quick. I just wonder how it is possible that the word language is used as UNCOUNT in "sign language"?
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Wed 26 Jan, 2005 12:42 pm
Not sure I follow -- do you mean capitalized?

"American Sign Language" is all capitalized, and can be abbreviated as "ASL". That's separate from signed languages, or learning sign language in general. As you note, there are many different signed langauges. I'm not sure if you learned ASL or another signed language, hence the question mark in brackets after "American". If you learned another signed language, that would be a good place to say which one. (Polish Sign Language or French Sign Language or whatever.)
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ryunin
 
  1  
Reply Thu 27 Jan, 2005 04:33 pm
UNCOUNT I mean "uncountable"

milk, chocolate, sugar, dust are typical uncountable nouns so we don't use "a" with these nouns unless we mean a piece of chocolate or a glass of beer etc.

so a language should always be a language, or the language,
so "where did you learn sign language" should be "where did you learn the sign language or a sign language"
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Thu 27 Jan, 2005 04:53 pm
Hmmm...

How it's actually used in English is either the name of the specific signed language ("American Sign Language", "Czech Sign Language"), or as I just did -- "signed language." You can also say "I'm learning sign language" and have that be a general statement of learning one of several signed languages.

You're right that it would be more correct to say, "I'm learning American Sign Language" or "I'm learning a signed language", but "I'm learning sign language" is colloquially correct.

"Where did you learn the sign language?" is not correct -- for one thing, there isn't a single ("the") signed language. There are a lot of them. So "where did you learn that signed language?" would be more correct, but still awkward.

If you want to create a sentence that is both colloquially and grammatically correct, it's probably best to use the name of the specific signed language -- "Where did you learn American Sign Language?"
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ryunin
 
  1  
Reply Thu 27 Jan, 2005 07:52 pm
Thank you, now I probably understand all about the grammar of sign language.
0 Replies
 
 

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