Grammar among Deaf People

Defination of natural!

Hey, I am really frown by your misunderstand and think its man made. Natural means it comes on its own. Tell me howcome asl were formed if no one taught small kids? They pick up naturally. You need to look up in dictionary, and I am not going to challenge your point of view, I went in college, did you? I did research 10 years ago, and my jaw was dropped.
Ask you, why in hearing school, they require english classes? If hearies already english spoken why require the class anyway? The purpose of teaching kids why their "Natural" spoken were spoke this and that. That way, they can better understand their own natural language and CAN learn other language much easier. In deaf school, teaching ASL is a NO NO NO the consequences were very clearly shown, but sadly those idiot hearing educators refused to look at this fact.
I wanted to add this, only 5 deaf school that taught ASL to small kids. Their success were high, and proven. Yet educator refused to accept the proof. Maryland school for the deaf is one of them. Its already HARD proof!

Again, please look up in dictionary the meaning of natural.

DHB
 
Stupidest: LOL

Your telling us English is stupidiest language? I think its hilarious! You could say that, but it is not really stupid language. It is the TOUGHEST language in the world. I couldn't believe chinese is the easiest language of all.. I think chinese language is stupidiest. But, again its just language.

DHB

gnarlydorkette said:
Because English has the stupidest rules out of all languages.

I was struggling with the "ed/ing"... because for me-- -ing is the continous process so if you say, "I am very interesting in you", it may mean that you are STILL very interested in that person. Same thing may be applied for "-ed".. it means in past. So "I am interested in you" may mean "I used to be interested in you but not anymore"....

Teachers teaching the deaf never explained the "special cases/rules" with the alternate usages/meaning of -ed and -ing for certain terms. For everyday my classroom was drilled to understand that "-ED" is for PAST... while "WILL (insert a verb)-ING" is for FUTURE et cetera... so some of the deaf students may misinterpret it (due to the lack of full extent of understanding English) and use it wrong.

To today, I am still rolling my eyes at everything English has to offer-- "no you cannot say that way because it doesn't mean that way so you have to say in an other way to make yourself clear with your way." HUH?! Fuck this and fuck English.

But you have to say the same thing for Hearing people's grammar usage. It is all about the quality and APPLICATION of one's education-- not because of their ability to hear or not. It is all about the EDUCATION and whether you DO understand what you just learned.

And Banjo-- you can say that English is a man-made language as well. I mean-- it doesn't sprout from the ground, isn't it? It just happened when some cavepeople mumbled... and some replied. then thus a language was born! [I am not SAYING that English is not the first language so back down, people]

Hope my explanation helps you to understand, Meg. :)
Remember, it goes the same for hearing people who doesn't speak English as their first (native) language. They do have the same problems because they don't realize that the English grammar rules are fluid as you are writing them!
 
Well, reading is very important to everyone, especially Deaf people.

Reading helps you to build up your vocabulary list, and to use grammar properly. You also learn how to use new words in a sentence.

Whilst reading, you learn about nouns, verbs, adjectives, metaphors, smilies, and many more styles of writing.

Reading also helps you to write your own stories, and to expand your creavity skills as well.
 
Ja, you got it right.

DHB

shezzbeav said:
Well, reading is very important to everyone, especially Deaf people.

Reading helps you to build up your vocabulary list, and to use grammar properly. You also learn how to use new words in a sentence.

Whilst reading, you learn about nouns, verbs, adjectives, metaphors, smilies, and many more styles of writing.

Reading also helps you to write your own stories, and to expand your creavity skills as well.
 
Defniation of Natural

I got perfect example of meaning "Natural".

You all know, kids loves Oreo cookies? Don't you notice they took the brown slice apart, then lick the inner part which is cream. WHO TAUGHT THEM???? WHERE DID THEY LEARN FROM???? Its AMAZED that they figure out on their own. That is true meaning of Natural. It does not necessarily grown on plant.
Other good classic example are... The beavers, who taught them to build dams? Engineers couldn't figure out where they learn from. That is because its natural for them to build dam, does beavers grow from plants? ROFL!!!!

DHB
 
I think natural language means what you use everyday and native language means what you started with. For example, someone born in Mexico is a native Spanish speaker but speaks English naturally after he stayed in the United States more than ten years.
 
diehardbiker65 said:
Hey, I am really frown by your misunderstand and think its man made. Natural means it comes on its own. Tell me howcome asl were formed if no one taught small kids? They pick up naturally. You need to look up in dictionary, and I am not going to challenge your point of view, I went in college, did you? I did research 10 years ago, and my jaw was dropped.

No, I didn't misunderstand anything. I already had stated that any languages are manmade including English and ASL. The meaning of a natural and a native language is different, it's not the same.

Yes, I did go to college and graduated with a diploma. Thanks for asking. Just because you went to the college doesn't automatically make you any more qualified than a high school dropout. You have to actually know what you are talking about.

By the way, the Oreo commercials show the kids licking the cream. So they must had learned it from the commercials, or they just wanted to explore the Oreo. The children are often curious and explore everything including food. It's a natural instinct that come with every human being. Curiosity is not the same as acquiring a language.

Ask you, why in hearing school, they require english classes? If hearies already english spoken why require the class anyway? The purpose of teaching kids why their "Natural" spoken were spoke this and that. That way, they can better understand their own natural language and CAN learn other language much easier.

The reason why students are required to take English courses is to enrich their literacy skills. That's why. I already had said that there is no better substitute in learning a language is to use the language itself. Just like a child has to be taught ASL through ASL while English must be taught through English.

In deaf school, teaching ASL is a NO NO NO the consequences were very clearly shown

Um... no. Many schools for the deaf now use ASL to teach the students as a part of the Bi-Bi approach. But I already had pointed out that the Bi-Bi approach isn't generating too much success, not even after all these years of using it.

but sadly those idiot hearing educators refused to look at this fact.

Such anti-hearing attitude you got there.

I wanted to add this, only 5 deaf school that taught ASL to small kids. Their success were high, and proven. Yet educator refused to accept the proof. Maryland school for the deaf is one of them. Its already HARD proof!

Where's the proof? I already asked you to, but you haven't provided any yet. Don't spew such so-called facts if you know you can't back them up!

Again, please look up in dictionary the meaning of natural.

Um, I'll suggest that you look up the word in the dictionary too as well.

Here's a part of the definition of the word, natural.

Not acquired; inherent

Dictionary.com

From what I know, ASL has to be acquired. Therefore, it is not natural. Just like English has to be acquired, the same goes for all of the languages.
 
diehardbiker65 said:
I got perfect example of meaning "Natural".

You all know, kids loves Oreo cookies? Don't you notice they took the brown slice apart, then lick the inner part which is cream. WHO TAUGHT THEM???? WHERE DID THEY LEARN FROM???? Its AMAZED that they figure out on their own. That is true meaning of Natural. It does not necessarily grown on plant.
Other good classic example are... The beavers, who taught them to build dams? Engineers couldn't figure out where they learn from. That is because its natural for them to build dam, does beavers grow from plants? ROFL!!!!

A language has to be acquired, but a natural instinct come natural because they are pre-programmed. But when it come to acquiring a language, a child need to be programmed manually.

A computer can come pre-installed with Windows XP, but can you get it to play DVD movies? No, you have to install a software in order to get the computer to play DVD movies. Children are like computers, they can come pre-installed with natural instincts, but they need the languages to be installed into them manually.

Pardon my geeky bit. But it makes sense to me.
 
Deafdyke said "...........make the same grammartical/syntaxial errors as do other people who learn English as a second language".

That's so true but I can beat that and say: MANY hearing Americans born and raised here really botch up the language that is their first, & one and only language when they put pen to paper!
 
That's so true but I can beat that and say: MANY hearing Americans born and raised here really botch up the language that is their first, & one and only language when they put pen to paper!
Oh yes.....again it's not limited to Deaf people. MANY hearies are almost illiterate when it comes to expressing themselves on paper....there are people on my lists who have no idear how to construct a proper sentence.
 
Yes, it's true that many Deaf have problems with grammar and vocabulary skills. It applies the same in reading skills. When I was little kid, they did a test by putting me in a speech therapy class. The test had proven useless for me. I couldn't "level" my voice even with my hearing aids or earphone because of my poor hearing level. I did very well with ASL and facial expression for my own communication. AND also, you know how do I communicate with people who don't sign? I was fortunate that I am able to write and read. So why do I need orals for? I was confused between oral, English, PSE, SEE and ASL during my childhood.

I think reading skills play an important role in how well a person's grammar skills are. I just wish many Deaf LIKE to read but unfortunately they don't like to read or don't care much for it. Some of the Deaf aren't being encouraged or disciplined to read in order to help them to improve their grammar and vocabulary skills.

However, I wish, my parents would send me to American School for the Deaf instead of Rhode Island School for the Deaf. The hearing teachers used their own sign language and caused me confuse visual their not correct signers. My academic went very poor due to confuse and conflict with toooooo many artificial language like SEE, PSE, SEE II, SE, CUED Speech, and many others while hearing people have ONE English language. So that is where it causes more complication for Deaf children learn too many artificial languages in their childhood. These artificial languages give us too many mixed messages and confusion because we do not understand the concept of English language at first. It creates more problems for all of us in this society. Also English language is very changeable all the time so what do you expect us to have a perfect English? Deaf children need to expose in ASL with Deaf or CODA teachers. They should teach their children to read and recognize ASL and writing as an important daily use.

State of Rhode Island of Education does not have the correct job describe suffixation in fluency ASL to work with Deaf and Hard of Hearing children. They hire teachers who are not fluency ASL to teach Deaf children not correct sign language.

How many years that I had been training with my speech therapy and wore hearing aid device but it fails me in many ways. I feel my hands and ten fingers were useless while I learned how to talk as a monkey voice. I am very talkative with people who know ASL but I am not talkative very much with hearing and my own Deaf voice because it is not successful for me to get them to listen. I sometimes feel like I am talking to the wall.

It is very limitation communication as I went through. ENOUGH is enough for me. Don't tell me it is all my faults. So what do you expect me to sit around and being isolated all the time for not having ASL?

Do you think ASL is to blame for Deaf people's problem with reading and writing?

BI-BI language has not exist in the classroom for many years after Alexander G Bell destroyed ASL and First Deaf Educator Laurent Clerc! BI-BI language are using in a very few Deaf school now and spread in a very slow pace. Bilingual/Bicultural (ASL) becomes more popular in the Deaf School nowadays.
Deaf parents with Deaf children are very successful with their written English. They communicate each other with their hands in ASL. It shows very successful already for me to see.

Also Deaf/hearing parents are encourage their children to read the books all the time where you can achieve into a written English. That's the answer. It has nothing to do with our ears but WE use our eyes as visualization to read and communicate in our hands to help us to understand a language.

Here is my favorite Deaf’s poem:

Author by Gil Eastman

Deaf Recipe

1/2 cup Refined American Signs

1/4 cup Natural Gesture

1/4 cup of American Manual Alphabet

1 cup Facial Expressions

Mix all ingredients gracefully in the Deaf Community, then....

Sprinkle with a handfull of care;

add dash of visual love;

brush with bodily engery;

pour in Deaf culture;

add deaf pride to suit your taste.

serve as communication feast for all to enjoy.
 
Last edited:
Reba said:
Sadly, the proper use of standard American English by hearing and deaf people is fading away. Reading comprehension seems to be a lost art. Even with the miracle of Spell-Check people can't produce a full paragraph without spelling errors. Proofreading for spelling and grammar errors is just not done. Thanks to im-ing, all kinds of weird spellings, abbreviations and acronyms are replacing standard spelling. The vocabulary of the average American is shrinking to the lowest common denominator. Finally, proper punctuation and capitalization is pretty much gone with the wind. Sigh....


Yes, I notice there are more and more abbreviation and acronyms on the AIM, pager and email. TTYL = Talk to you later BRB = be right back

GN good night ASAP = as soon as possible, BTW= by the way

http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci211776,00.html

I am too unhappy about this because there is more popular using abb and acr words for little kids on their chat room and Instant Message. :(
 
Well said, Sabrina!



"ing" is present
"ed" is past
without use "ing" or "ed" mean is "will" (future)....
 
Magatsu said:
Don't ask me... When I read many of your posts... I am jealous of your grammatical skill. So don't ask me... ;)


shezzbeav, you mentioned 'reading' twice or more than two times, so I am curious about you... You stressed the need to reading, what's your interpretation of 'reading'? Why I asked because one person I know kept saying that reading is important but later on, I found out that person only read the newspapers, nothing else.. not even novels, journals or informative books. Just newspaper. However, I do agree with you that reading is very, very important for everyone to learn about anything. I read many books, I seem to have lost count...

Banjo, yes, I unfortunately am using this English to communicate with you people. If I have a choice, I would go for German language or probably Swedish. From what I understand, German is the most easiest language to learn and it is considered a 'universal' language (according to one of books I read when I was in High School). But again, beggars does not have a choice.

No, German is not easy language but very complication. They have many different verbs, pronues, past, future as English. My sons learn English and told me that English language is easier because of use "ing", "ed", only "the", "you" which it's opposite to German language to use more grammers than just use "ing", "ed", "the", "you".
 
Liebling:-))) said:
No, German is not easy language but very complication. They have many different verbs, pronues, past, future as English. My sons learn English and told me that English language is easier because of use "ing", "ed", only "the", "you" which it's opposite to German language to use more grammers than just use "ing", "ed", "the", "you".
I guess this quote is perfect for our discussion: The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence...

In any case, thanks for information!
 
Whoaaa, good thread, Meg, and I understand your intentions completely. Like you, I would scratch my head to see any of my friends say something like, "I am very interesting to learn more about that." But do I correct them when they do that? Nope, not any more. For a recent example, I was chatting by messenger with a fellow deafie, and I said something like, "Guess I will have to be patient."
That person said, "LOL, you mean 'patience,' duhhhh!"
That got my dander up and I insisted I was correct, and linked the dictionary definition.
The reply was that, Oh well, yeah, it might be correct but it complicates things so he will stick with patience, since it worked for him thus far, phhhhht.
Sighhhh, lol.
I have to keep in mind that these are actual human beings that I converse with, and I KNOW it is not really their fault that they have difficulty with languages. I googled to find out the easiest and hardest languages in the world, and I came up with
http://nicologic.free/fr/Foreign_Language_Learning.htm
I won't tell you WHAt it claims to be the most difficult language to learn, nor the easiest. But it had a constant theme, that one has to have the ability to identify a sound or pitch, and I can understand where the frustrations come in.
Hmmmm, "interested" and "interesting" looks similar to lipreaders, come to think of it.
I rest my case, lol.
 
Beowulf said:
Whoaaa, good thread, Meg, and I understand your intentions completely. Like you, I would scratch my head to see any of my friends say something like, "I am very interesting to learn more about that." But do I correct them when they do that? Nope, not any more. For a recent example, I was chatting by messenger with a fellow deafie, and I said something like, "Guess I will have to be patient."
That person said, "LOL, you mean 'patience,' duhhhh!"
That got my dander up and I insisted I was correct, and linked the dictionary definition.
The reply was that, Oh well, yeah, it might be correct but it complicates things so he will stick with patience, since it worked for him thus far, phhhhht.
Sighhhh, lol.
I have to keep in mind that these are actual human beings that I converse with, and I KNOW it is not really their fault that they have difficulty with languages. I googled to find out the easiest and hardest languages in the world, and I came up with
http://nicologic.free/fr/Foreign_Language_Learning.htm
I won't tell you WHAt it claims to be the most difficult language to learn, nor the easiest. But it had a constant theme, that one has to have the ability to identify a sound or pitch, and I can understand where the frustrations come in.
Hmmmm, "interested" and "interesting" looks similar to lipreaders, come to think of it.
I rest my case, lol.


Ahh thank you Beowulf! For a moment I thought I was totally misunderstood here and just wanted to know WHY ed/ing gets mixed up. Because it can create major misunderstandings. I have a friend who met a guy and he kept saying " I am interesting " and she couldnt figure out if he meant he was interested in HER or if he was boasting that he is an interesting person. LOL

:ty:
 
Liebling:-))) said:
No, German is not easy language but very complication. They have many different verbs, pronues, past, future as English. My sons learn English and told me that English language is easier because of use "ing", "ed", only "the", "you" which it's opposite to German language to use more grammers than just use "ing", "ed", "the", "you".

Yeah, German has a lot of rules. There are three different words for "you" (singular informal, singular formal, and plural), several words for "the" (masculine, feminine, neutral, plural, etc...), etc... When the verbs have to be conjugated, it can be written in different endings: (think = denken, ich denke, du denkst, er denkt, wir denken, ihr denkt, sie denken...), etc... Even though I have known German since 13 or 14 years, I still make mistakes in grammar. Ugh
 
It is my understanding that there are many ways to say the word "snow" if you live in the artic regions.
Does not sound deaf-friendly, does it now?
 
So "I am interested in you" may mean "I used to be interested in you but not anymore"....

Actually, no because "I am interested in you" implies that you are interested in them, but if you said "I was interested in you", then yes it would mean "I used to be interested in you but not anymore"....

Anyways, I can see what it is you are asking. I think a lot of the problem is that deaf people tend to write/type the way they sign. Whenever my brother-in-law (who is deaf btw) sends me a message on my pager, the only way I can understand him is by first signing the message to myself then translate it as if I am a voice interpreter.

I am hopefully going to be teaching deaf students in a mainstream school this fall, so maybe I can give you a better answer after that. I am hoping I can use my experience as a deaf/hoh student to help other deaf students.

I also agree with whoever it whoever it was about mainstreamed english. The students do not need to fall further behind by taking them out of regular english classes. Instead, they need to learn from their hearing classmates and to make sure that they understand why they have to write this or that way. I hope I am making sense.
 
Back
Top