Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheri
I somewhat agrees and I somewhat disagree with his message, don't get me wrong, I do understand where he's coming from and what's he's trying to say, while social events are for the Deaf community usually get together having a good time and chatting their way with their hands in sign language, without having ASL students disturbing them, asking questions about their signs, or the deaf culture.
While I don't have a problem with ASL students come and learn about us (deaf people) because we are the reason for them to learn sign language, because they want to learn to communicate with us, they're interesting in us (deaf people) I don't feel right in my opinion to shut them out and think of myself by having fun with other deaf people. I'm so grateful that they're learning signs and they're so curious about our culture, and it does means so much to me, and that I feel that I owe them their time for questions.
When I go up to Starbucks, there's a get together for the deaf community, I have seen many ASL students there sitting on one and another tables together, I feel bad you know because I feel like the group of deaf people are ignoring them, I don't want to make it look like deaf people are somewhat stuck up, because we are not, we are better than that. Don't you agree? I know what is it like to be left out, and I don't want to put other people in that very same situation. That's just me.
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I agree with u but there are times when I see someone that I havent seen in years at an event and I want to use the time to catch up with them so of course at that time, I wont be thinking nor be in the mood to teach ASL students some signs all night.
Jillo's suggestion on different ways ASL students can approach to signers would work with me. What wont work with me is different people coming up to me without introducing themselves asking me the signs for this or that especially when I am in the middle of a conversation. My point of starting this thread is to make them aware not to ban them from Deaf socials.
About feeling left out...this is going to be ironic. There was a group of ASL students at a Deaf event one time about a couple of years ago whom joined one conversation my friends and I were having, which is not a problem but what happened was that they would start chatting away with each other without signing in the middle of the conversation leaving us Deafies out. That is a big NO NO. Of course by doing that, they will get purposely ignored for the rest of the evening cuz it would turn a lot of people off.