Thought I'd jump in on this one too 
I appologise in advance ... I tend to write essays.
Cental34 -
Ummm if I remember correctly you do relay ??? so would I be correct that your co-worker is also a CA ???
I've spent a lot of time, writing back and forth to deaf ASLers - and yeah , sometime the engligh can be hard to understand - it's really important to remember , and remind others that for many of us , using written english is a 2nd or 3rd language ( personally I tend to think of speechreading as a seperate 'language', of it's own... even though I know that's technically not accurate)
I think we tend to read better than write. It's much easier to read a 2nd language, and go look up the words you don't "get" , or guess at the context , than it is to try to create the words ( phrases) from scratch.
I primarily usually use a TTY for "important things" such as solving issues with the bank, or doctor, or other things that can be fairly stressful - and even though I had enough hearing as a child to aquire English fairly "normally" .. when I get stressed out, it's my english that gets messed up first ( not my ASL). I'm sure that there have been a number of people on the other end of my relay calls thinking " what a stupid .... "
ASL is a true language:
*It has it's own grammar structure
*it does have tenses, just not in the same way that it's done in English
*it has it's own form of poetry, and stories.
*There's an arguement to be made that ASL does have a written form via "signwriting" - though I don't know anyone that uses it :roll:
Of course there are a number of languages that either have no written form , or have an artifically created written system.
PSE, SEE, SEEII etc are not Languages , but instead a visual "mode" or "code" of english, in much the same way that braille a manually coded version of printed text, but not it's own written language.
Hmmm about it being hard to get the point across in ASL ... I think that's a fluency issue more than anything else. As with all languages some things just are really had to translate - something that might be a simple thing in ASL , could be a complicated thing in English , or vise versa. ASL has expressions like "OUT" ( meaning , feeling left out of something, and not being able to follow etc) , and "TRAIN GO SORRY" ... both of which I think are MUCH easier to understand in ASL , than English. English has a number of things that are hard to translate into ASL though - figures I can't think of anything right now though :roll:
It's important to realise that these issues exist in all languages , not just ASL to English ... expressions like "needles in a haystack" translate into " ants in a log" in french ( I think I translated that rcorrectly)
I hope this helps a bit .... I'd love to yack more about it if you're up to it ( either publically , or PM)
