A city where sign language is the primary language.

Any two individuals who speak the same language are going to feel more of a community affinity the any dozen people who do not. I do not want to defend the Sapier-Whorff hypothesis here, which I am ambivalent about. But language reflects the categories of knowledge of, and assumption about, the world that we hold to be true. Any condition that prevents those assumptions from being challenged is going to isolate the individual and group and lead to less understanding, and cooperation and increase misunderstanding and conflict.

I tried to keep it simple, but this is really sticking in my craw. I have put untold time and untold effort into being able to communicate verbally with hearing people. I am, by the standards of the Deaf community, extraordinarily skilled, and also have many advantages that most people do not. I was hearing for a long time, and can still speak quite understandably. (Most people only think I have an accent, not that I am deaf.) I had frequent ear infections as a child and learned to lipread. I am very, very, good at it.

Yet my life is a constant, unending stream of frustrations and exclusion. I choose it anyway. I don't plan on moving to Laurent. But with all of my advantages, I am exhausted after a session of chatting with my daughter's playmate's mom. I have no idea what the other moms on the playground are saying, whether I might have more of a connection with them. I have to sit there and grin uncertainly as my daughter chats with a hearing stranger in a grocery store -- what are they saying? Any casual interaction, with neighbors, people at the store, people I see on the street -- EVERYTHING takes enormous effort and is still hit and miss. Maybe I'll understand -- quite possibly I won't. And if I don't, then what? Smile and nod neutrally? Keep asking them to repeat as their smiles fade and irritation mounts? Get out a pad of paper and see the smiles freeze and the "oh the poor girl" expressions come out?

And you say that with a time and effort and desire (is there anything I desire more???) I should be able to overcome that?

Your understanding of this issue is sorely lacking.

Okay, I'll ask: What is the Sapier-Whorff hypothesis? As best I know, Whorff is a Klingon security officer on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and he won't be born for a few hundred years. (That was cheap. Couldn't resist, sorry ) Given my ignorance in sociology, let me frame it in practical terms. How do you feel about China Town and Little Italy in New York City. Is it your position that it would make New York better off to "desegregate" them? Did it make New York worse off when they formed? If not, how would it be different if New York had a few contiguous blocks of Deaf people? And how would it be different from Deaf people spontaneously creating such residential areas now? Possibly in the countryside?

Sozobe, you have taken my point and reversed it. There would be more ease of communication if the others made the effort to understand your means of communication, which apparently they do not feel the need to do. Rather they leave it to you to understand their's. Pidgin languages are one of the ways verbal communities over come these barriers. If you feel frustrated it is because the effort (and onus) is being put on you. My point, apparently poorly made, is that the verbal community should be more inclusive by learning at least the basics of ASL if there is a deaf community in their presence. Canada has addressed this problem by requiring all students to learn at least the basics of French.

But there are Deaf people everywhere. There's a huge Deaf community in Columbus. I would love it if everyone in Columbus was fluent in sign -- hearing people, Deaf people, everyone.

And used it all the time.

Kind of like Laurent.

Meanwhile, I was directly addressing a point you made. This is NOT equivalent to the language situations you brought up. If I were a hearing English-speaker and lived in a French-speaking community and experienced the frustrations I experience now, I would learn French. It would take time and effort and desire, but it would be feasible. Once I learned French, ALL of those barriers would fall -- overhearing other people's conversations, being able to speak to anyone I wanted with no particular effort.

That is not an option that is available to me.

Yes, Acquinunk, but in Canada the French speakers to English speakers ratio is 1:3. And the French speakers do live in a contiguous territory which, on a smaller scale, you object to. In the US, the ASL speakers to English speakers ratio is -- what? 1:100? I don't think the Canadian approach is politically feasible here.

I think it's more like 1:10000 if you're talking about profoundly deaf ASL users as opposed to those with a hearing loss. (I need to go but can look it up later.)

And that brings up another point -- the ASL-using Deaf community is a small percentage of the total hearing loss community, and the non-ASL-using hearing loss community is already annoyed at how many ASL-based resources (interpreters etc.) are allocated to the deaf/hoh population as a whole. Any kind of push to have everyone in America learn ASL would require tremendous resources, and the non-ASL-using hearing loss community would NOT be happy about all of those resources going someplace that wouldn't benefit them. And the non-ASL-using hearing loss community is the numerical majority, by far.

Definitely not gonna happen. Not the most miniscule chance.

I mean I'd love it, but no.

In Canada, the contiguous French population is only in Quebec and even there not completely. Part of the problem was that both communities refused to use the language of the other it was political as much as anything else. It New Brunswick and Nova Scotia there in much more cross language linguistic community communication, although it is far from perfect.

The Sapier-Whorf (only one F, sorry) Hypotheses proposes that language structures the way we see reality. Edward Sapier and Benjamin Whorf were anthropologist (Whorf was Sapier's graduate student). It is a controversial theory and not well supported by the data. Here are two links that will explain it better then I can.


Linguistic Society of America
http://www.lsadc.org/
click on "About Linguistics" then "Fields of Linguistics" then "Language and Thought by D. Slobin"

The Sapier-Whorf Hypothesis
http://venus.va.com.au/suggestion/sapir.html


I'm scheduled to take a significant other to a movie this afternoon so I'll be off for the rest of the day.

I just found a cite in Lane, Hoffmeister, Bahan: A journey into the Deaf-World, DawnSignPress (1996). It says: "ASL is the language of a sizeable minority. Estimates range from 500,000 to two million speakers in the U.S. alone; there are also many speakers in Canada." That would be somewhere between 1:150 and 1:600. However, the cite is in the beginning of Chapter 3: "The language of the Deaf World", where they are establishing that ASL is for real. That gives them an incentive to pick a high number and count non-fluent speakers too. I don't see them comment whether the factor-four range in their estimates reflects the range of fluency or the lack of a proper census. But it's been a few years since I last read the whole book, so I could have easily missed it elsewhere. (They do mention a remarkable factoid I'd forgotten: The American Census Bureau, in its surveys, doesn't provide a checkbox where respondents can enter "ASL" as their mother tongue, though they do for some much less frequently spoken languages. Strange.)

I was interested in ASL back when sozobe was talking in other threads about early communication with her daughter. It seems advantageous to know and use; I wish it was more popularly taught. It may be, I just don't know about it.

ASL is available as an interest evening program at many local high schools, as well as through city-funded programs, and in local churches.

The last time I looked into it, I could find free courses every day of the week within walking distance.

My finger spelling was once very good, used to practice on the way to work every day. Had a number of deaf clients, so it was useful and used. Now my ASL and finger-spelling is beyond rusty. I think I can still order a beer, find the bathroom, sign yes/no/LuvYa and back-off.

Actually, it's a bit more helpful than my usable Italian.

~~~~

Still mulling about the separate community. I'm generally not for any form of segregation on principle, but still thinking about it.

If it hadn't been Oliver Sacks' book, my automatic response would have been "no way, this is a stupid idea". His discussion of the early communities in the U.S. opened my mind to the concept. Somewhat.

Hi Thomas,

Cool that you have that book. :-)

That sentence can be a little misleading, I think. "...the language of..." implies that it is the only language or first language of those people. The stats I have found with similar numbers are for "ASL users." That's a significant difference -- it includes interpreters, a deaf person's family members, hearing people who have become fluent (if we even assume "fluency" is a standard for "ASL users" -- this is evidently not clear) because they wish to communicate with a Deaf friend or they just like the language (as separate from interpreters), etc., etc., etc.

I was talking about a much narrower subset -- deaf people who use ASL and do not have aural access to spoken English. (For the purposes of this discussion, there is no reason to include people who are already bi-lingual in ASL and spoken English.)

This has a lot of info, not exactly what I was looking for, but shows how the numbers usually include non-deaf signers as well:

gri.gallaudet.edu/Presentations/2004-04-07-1.pdf

What I was looking for and couldn't find was a stat I saw on a hearing loss usergroup about how many ASL-using Deaf people there are. Like the numbers you site, this stat was being used to bolster a case, and here it was that a tiny minority (of the total hearing loss population) was claiming most of the resources. The number was somewhere around 25,000-50,000. I can't find it and I can't remember exactly, so I won't stake too much on it.

Suffice it to say, the numbers are not nearly enough to bring mandating ASL instruction for every American within even the outer realm of possibility. Just absolutely not going to happen -- and that's not even going into the whole incidental learning/ incidental communication thing. If you have a huge numerical majority who know ASL but don't use it in their everyday life while speaking to each other -- and why would they? -- you're still missing out, you're still not part of the social fabric.

Also not going into what it means exactly for a population to learn ASL (and retain it.) How much? A clerk signing "That will be $5" and some memorized generic small talk is completely different from getting into an impassioned political discussion with your local shopkeeper.

Believe me, Acquiunk, if you were saying only, "Every American really should learn ASL" I'd have no problem 'tall. Agreed! I only have a problem when it becomes, "Laurent should not exist because every American should learn ASL."

ehBeth, have you read the New York Times article I linked to a while back?

Another lovely letter to the editor:




(People had a feature on Laurent a couple of weeks ago.)

Hahaha! I get it! Deaf and dumb! Hehee! Who would have thought of such witty wordplay? Sozobe, you have to hand it to Deborah that she is original and inventive, 'cause I'm sure you never heard that one before ..... right?

I wonder how Seinfeld would fare there?

People like Ms. Gideon make it SO hard for me to be open-minded about cochlear implants. I'm glad she thinks her daughter has full access to the world of the hearing. I sure hope it's true.

Newbie :-(
Unfortunately I'm new to "Able2Know" so I'm unfamiliar. Found the link searching (yea, googling) for the name OF the ASL only city. So what is it? (big grin). And worse yet I'm a Newbie who used to be a software developer / programmer (yes, that long ago).

So what's the name of it kids? What is this section/topic/etc. that has to do with Deaf & HoH like me?

Don't hold my hand, don't tease me, just answer the damned question!

We don't have a section for deaf/HOH. But, I think that MANY of us are variously HOH. Heehee.

I bet if you read up on this thread, you'll find some info!

Welcome to A2K!

Found the info, thanks!
Yep, it was Laurent, South Dakota!! Found the site and harshly bookmarked it in IE (yes I still use it, harumph!). :-)

Should have remembered it. I consider Gallaudet (Deaf) University "home" and Laurent Clerc is the founder (Deaf I think) so I should have remebered it was named after him!!

Oh well, I ain't a Deafie (yet) and don't know enough ASL (yet).