Rose Immortal said:
Teresh--Might you say it's easier to pick up on the word roots of a sign you don't recognize, as opposed to a spoken word you've never heard before?
No... Just that video languages are a lot more universal than audio languages. This is evidenced not by my better understanding of signing, but by the fact that people who sign in entirely different sign languages have a lot less difficulty communicating than two people speaking entirely different languages.
To illustrate this, try putting two hearing people, one American, one Japanese in a room together. Make sure beforehand that the American person doesn't know any Japanese and the Japanese person doesn't know any English. Tell them both to converse but not to make any gestures. Most likely, they'll both get frustrated with each other and sit staring at each other until you tell them they can go. Then, tell them that they can gesture to each other to get the point across. You'll find they have a much more productive conversation if they can both see what is being said, since they don't understand the audio language.
Next, take two Deaf people, one American, one Japanese, and put them in a room together. Make sure that the Japanese person is not familiar with ASL and the American person does not use any of the several forms of JSL. With all likelihood, they'll be able to overcome the difference in sign languages quite quickly and have a much more productive conversation than the hearing people did, even with gestures.
This is not to imply that Deaf is any better or worse than hearing, but instead to acknowledge that sign languages are much more universal in nature do their iconographic representation of words and ideas, whereas spoken languages are entirely arbitrary. The word for baseball in one language will vary from language to language, but I'd imagine in most sign languages, it involves holding or swinging an imaginary bat or some other action that often occurs in baseball, such as pitching.
Sign languages are simply more universal by their iconographic way of rendering information. Some have argued that signing is slower, but I've generally found that that isn't true, and in many cases signing is faster... And even if it is sometimes slower... The words actually make more sense because they're in touch with the way's people think rather than being arbitrarily determined by some person in the past.
)
I myself am hearing, and when I am talking to my foster son who is deaf, I will use my voice and sign at the same time, to enhance his speech skills. When we first took him in, he couldn't speak a word at all.
