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Originally Posted by Reba
American Sign Language is the signed language of the United States. American spoken and written English is the verbal and printed language of the United States. No contradiction. When Deaf signers write a note, they write English, not Spanish. When they read lips, they read English, not Spanish. When they fingerspell, they spell in English, not Spanish. When they read a menu, they read English, not Spanish.
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You already contradicted yourself to begin with.
Fingerspelling isn't ASL. That is why ASL isn't a fully developed language yet and never will be because deaf people still has to fingerspell many, many words and most hearing people don't understand fingerspelling to begin with.
If American Sign Language is the signed language of the United States, then why is it listed as a foreign language in many schools? I can't agree with you on ASL being the signed language of the United States. Nobody has proclaimed that. Especially when the majority of deaf people don't even sign and ASL users represent a very small percentage of the deaf population.
Most interpreters tend to overlook that fact regarding the deaf population. The numbers of ASL users that people has claimed to live in the USA has been greatly exaggerated. I have no doubt on that myself.
I'm a deaf person, I would know that myself.
From what I believe, the population of signers (including ASLers) would be around 500,000 nationwide, it may top out at around a million if lucky. The amount of pure ASLers is far smaller in population. Less than 250,000 I would say. The rest are PSE, SEE, SEE2 signers and more.
Heck, most ASLers aren't really pure ASLers because they still have to fingerspell words everyday. ASL is definitely not the signed language of the USA due to the small number of vocabularies.
Again, again, again and again... you missed the point of what I'm trying to tell you. You
CANNOT prevent American English from being overtaken by a different language. Not even the language laws can prevent it. It is very possible that people will be speaking a language that would be different from our language in 250 years.
Like I said,
nothing stays the same forever. Like it or not, that is life.