Post by Christine on Sept 17, 2017 20:05:50 GMT -5
Sept 17, 2017 17:44:27 GMT -5 @cassandraw said:
Here, it's extremely hard for me to believe, looking at those captions, that even if the guy was a total optimist who waaay overrated his skills,he could have thought he clearly conveyed this important message.
I watched it again, just looking at him and his face. He seemed relatively assured (as opposed to faking) that he was getting the message across.
{But he could have been faking that assurance, knowing he was screwing up royally. It's definitely a possibility.)
I think the more likely option is that this is the way he would talk to his brother, who might actually understand him.
To give it a bit more background, I had a deaf friend when I was 6 years old, living in Miami, and though I moved away a couple of years later, I had become obsessed with sign language. I started formally learning ASL in my early teens, and was interpreting church sermons by age 15. I did that for a couple of years, and was going to apply to Flagler College in St. Augustine, but then life *cough*pregnancy*cough* took me in another direction.
I say that to say that I when watched this guy signing, it was obvious that he is a sibling of a deaf person, and he totally reminds me of relatives of deaf people I interpreted for. Hearing relatives often sign uniquely. Just because you have a deaf sibling doesn't mean you become fluent in sign language. Their signs are not necessarily correct, but their relatives understand them, because time and interaction. And deaf people aren't all oh-you're-signing-it-wrong to their relatives. They're often just finding a way to communicate with each other, and they make it work. I remember my closest deaf acquaintance back then, a mother with a teenage (hearing) son. When the son would talk to her it was all flips and quick short bursts of signs that were utterly meaningless to me. It *wasn't* sign language. And I'd look to the mom, and she'd sign, "He just said... blah blah blah" so I could understand what he'd said.
So again, this guy could be full of it, to be sure. But I don't know that he didn't know he wasn't communicating.
I think it's on the county to get, and have on standby, certified ASL interpreters for these sorts of events.