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Die or go drifting and languages change
I need to learn some ASL.
I was on the Green Line to Kenmore this afternoon when a small child sitting next to me tried to talk to me. She looked a little older than my niece, so maybe five or six; she was sitting with an adult who looked like a parent to me, but since I have at different times been mistaken for the parent of my niece, my godchild, and my first cousin once removed, I try not to assume. They were signing to one another. I was reading and keeping an eye on the stops. But I looked over at one point and made eye contact with the kid and she started signing to me.
I have no idea what she was saying. More to the point, I couldn't say anything back. My knowledge of American Sign Language is confined to the alphabet and "I love you," of which the first seemed tedious and the second inappropriate. I don't even know how to say, as I do in a variety of spoken languages, "I'm sorry, I don't really speak this language." I have been shown various signs over the years and they are difficult for me to learn in the same way that dance is difficult for me to learn, but I felt really bad not being able to respond to a small child on a train who was probably asking me what I was reading. Or even if she was telling me a story about her day, or that we were on a train, or that she likes blue, that is the kind of reaching out that I always feel should be rewarded. I smiled apologetically and turned my hands out in an abbreviated I-got-nothing shrug and waved so that at least I was making a friendly gesture and she smiled and signed something else I couldn't understand and the adult with her looked over and nodded to me and I went back to my book. I felt that I had not been helpful.
(I know ASL is not the only sign language. I just assume it is the likeliest to be in use around here. Obviously if it was another sign language or some kind of home sign I would have been hosed even if I knew rudimentary ASL.)
Suggestions appreciated.
I was on the Green Line to Kenmore this afternoon when a small child sitting next to me tried to talk to me. She looked a little older than my niece, so maybe five or six; she was sitting with an adult who looked like a parent to me, but since I have at different times been mistaken for the parent of my niece, my godchild, and my first cousin once removed, I try not to assume. They were signing to one another. I was reading and keeping an eye on the stops. But I looked over at one point and made eye contact with the kid and she started signing to me.
I have no idea what she was saying. More to the point, I couldn't say anything back. My knowledge of American Sign Language is confined to the alphabet and "I love you," of which the first seemed tedious and the second inappropriate. I don't even know how to say, as I do in a variety of spoken languages, "I'm sorry, I don't really speak this language." I have been shown various signs over the years and they are difficult for me to learn in the same way that dance is difficult for me to learn, but I felt really bad not being able to respond to a small child on a train who was probably asking me what I was reading. Or even if she was telling me a story about her day, or that we were on a train, or that she likes blue, that is the kind of reaching out that I always feel should be rewarded. I smiled apologetically and turned my hands out in an abbreviated I-got-nothing shrug and waved so that at least I was making a friendly gesture and she smiled and signed something else I couldn't understand and the adult with her looked over and nodded to me and I went back to my book. I felt that I had not been helpful.
(I know ASL is not the only sign language. I just assume it is the likeliest to be in use around here. Obviously if it was another sign language or some kind of home sign I would have been hosed even if I knew rudimentary ASL.)
Suggestions appreciated.
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Thank you! My niece was taught baby sign and used it enthusiastically for some time overlapping with spoken language, but now seems to have dropped it entirely. I assume it will give her an edge if she ever decides to pick a sign language back up as an older child or an adult.
I learned fingerspelling in elementary school, and my mother used the sign for "I love you" as far back as I can remember, but I can't remember being taught any other signs formally.
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That makes sense. And in the meantime Kit will be able to converse with kids on subways.