Deaf or HoH people: Wondering if anyone could help with research

[Sederwall]

Hi! I am a senior in high school this year and am doing research on ASL, deaf and HoH people, and the community for a capstone project. I am curious if anyone would like to help me? I mainly would like to do some interviews, learn some more asl, and just learn more about the community. I am 17, I know very little ASL, I can do fingerspelling although I am a little slow at reading it. I'm insanely Interested In this topic and any input would help loads!
Thank you in advance,
Sederwall

 

[x1heavy]

The fastest way to immerse yourself is to find a deaf church and visit.

Learning a sign language is not about speed or ... being leet, but rather a lifetime journey of learning. It is a living language where any two deaf or any two people communicating with such is a time to learn from each other.

For example if I use the word Early in the original form from the east coast to someone in the south who does that differently the finger spelling comes into handy to explain the word. Then one of us will probably adapt the new sign for early, usually the visitor to the area from another part of the USA. So I picked up a mess of words which further disorganized the ASL in my head a little bit. But thats ok.

ABC is the foundation of signing along with numbers, concept of future, past and the ability to assign a person, subject or situation in the air in front of you in several spots. For example here comes David (Points to the left) to meet Mary (Points to the right) once those two are named, you only need to point to each one instead of going over their names. Continue the story. Eventually Mommy calls mary to come inside its late (Mommy would be in the distance in front, implication is the house and porch is over there in front of you.) Then you can build on the situation by using feelings and all the other things available to Humans who use this language.

Speed will come along in due time. Its not something to be worried about or made excuses for. We all had to learn one letter at a time. Even I do go slow when I have to use some of the languages that have not been used over 50 years. Particularly with older people who use Signed English rather than ASL. So there is three languages involved here. What a mess.

The fastest way to absorb a language is to be among the people constantly that use it. You cannot help but learn.