learn sign language

I haven’t learned a HUGE number of signs (one of my books alone has 1,000 in it), but I’ve learned a few important ones, and I’ve learned a lot about sign language etiquette and Deaf culture, and it’s very fascinating. I always thought ASL was like speaking sign language with your hands, but it’s a complete different grammatical structure and everything. Considering I’m slightly hard of hearing and apparently getting worse (people at my work yell at me to get my attention because word has gotten around, and they give me a bit of a hard time about it, too…I’ve been able to adapt a little bit because I learned to turn my head so my good ear is closer to where the sound is coming from, learned how to read customers’ lips and body language a little bit so I can more easily tell what they want (a lot of people either point to or look at what they want to order, and since there’s a fixed number of things I can make them), and learned how to always ask if that’s what they want before I do something), this is all relevant to me, too.

Since most of the books are structured with lessons and such, I’m going to start teaching myself like it’s a class, and getting my fiance to help me understand the diagrams and such (sometimes I can’t tell what the people in the picture are doing, and it’s frustrating!).

I checked four sign language books out of the library…now I just need to read them and learn something! Like I’ve said I can understand most of what my fiance signs to me (neither of us is deaf, although we are both mildly hearing-impaired…we just like the secretiveness), but I can only respond with finger spelling because I am ALWAYS better at understanding than speaking…I can understand three languages (English, Spanish, and Italian) but can only speak one fluently.

I’m starting to understand most of what he signs to me, but I still have NO idea how to say much of anything to him!

When I visited my fiance in jail he started signing “I love you” to me because we have closed circuit TV instead of warm-blooded human beings on the other side of the glass and my friend was having visitation with her boyfriend at the same time (we went together so I could get an extra visitation appointment for the week). Then, it turned out he’d taught all his friends in there some sign language, which was pretty cool, and I learned a few new signs.

Now I REALLY want to learn sign language, so he and I can communicate in different ways and ways everybody else around us won’t understand.

I know most of the alphabet, but then I learned it in 5th grade, so relearning it isn’t all that hard.

The only other signs I seem to know are R-rated ones. There are three. “Smoke crack.” “Butt pirate.” “F- You.” Yes, my mind is in the gutter. I admit that. And no, I do not have many opportunities to use any of those signs in my daily life.

I want to learn so I can talk to my fiance’s deaf friend. From what I’ve heard about him and what my fiance has interpreted of their conversations (only things that were directed at me), he seems pretty cool, and not being able to say much at all really frustrates me.