Signing Exact English

Matthew S. Moore and Linda Levitan is an incredibly insightful book and answered many interesting questions about the Deaf culture and community and helped me to continue my education about Deaf culture. In chapter nine, the authors address the differences between Deaf humor and English humor, and how humor translates between cultures and languages. English humor, which is often based off of English wordplay, is very difficult if not impossible for many Deaf individuals to understand and appreciate. Similarly, English hearing individuals do not always understand Deaf humor, especially if it is about hearing people (cite page). This translatability of humor across cultures and languages is something that I had not thought about previously but I agree with the author’s opinion that it is generally not translatable and often the humor is lost across translation and due to differences in culture. While some topics may be humorous to many as it cannot be refuted that hearing and a Deaf person can in fact find amusement about the same thing, specific Deaf jokes would be hard to translate so that a hearing person would understand the joke without also explaining the Deaf culture behind the joke, just as English wordplay jokes would have to be explained thoroughly before they could be properly understood by a Deaf person. In chapter nine, the authors not only addressed humor but they additionally discussed the title of the book. I thought that this discussion was very interesting…

movements, shoulder raises, mouth morphemes, and movements of the body” (ASL: a brief description, n.d.). More specifically, ASL may also vary among individuals. Pidgin Signed English, or PSE, is a combination of ASL and English. Since ASL is a distinct language, it does not translate perfectly into English, with many words and syntax rules differentiating. Most often, people who learn English before ASL, are not culturally Deaf, and/or are hearing do not sign strictly in ASL, but rather mix…

of visual English, Signed Exact English. American Sign Language (ASL) is a complete, distinct language with its own vocabulary and grammar that developed almost two hundred years ago. Signed Exact English (SEE) is a recently new communication system of English through a combination of ASL signs, modified ASL signs, and unique English signs. American Sign Language is a preferred system of communication over Signed Exact English because of its difference in historical background, linguistics,…

American Sign Language and British Sign Language are the same things, right? Wrong. Just because both countries speak English doesn’t mean their Sign Language will be the same. We people who are hearing may not understand it, but for people all over the world who are deaf, they don’t have the same sign language techniques or even origins. Unlike, the American and English language, the two sign languages were not adopted from one another. Although, the two have minimal similarities the…

cried while standing at the security line waving to my family behind the window glasses. Gray, rainy day. A whole gray rainy month to be exact. It didn’t matter. I was there. In control of my life. Nothing to control yet, but whatever would come up, I was in charge. This is what taking your life in your own hands means. Lessons learned fast. I woke…

learning to speak. According the essay “Literacy: A Lineage”, by Melanie Luken, who was a French and English major at the Ohio State University “Studying a foreign language can, at times, be just like learning how to read and write as a child”(135). This statement made me wonder is it possible to be adults and children have the same capacity to learn a new language?…

One specific language spoken in Australia, called Guugu Yimithirr, is very heavily studied because it has no egocentric words, or words focused on themselves. They don’t use words like left or right, but instead north or south. This interested many scientists and brought about several studies. The most curious of which was done by showing one native English speaker and one native Guugu Yimithirr speaker a room facing south, and then showing them both a room across the hall that had the exact…

The year of 1944 led the nation of Canada into despair over the issue of the WW2. The current situation at that times steered people to believe that Conscription was the only solution to the problem. Conscription was the compulsory enrollment in armed forces which had once tore apart the nation of Canada back in 1917. The after math of was that the conscription crisis of 1944 in Canada, which was an unnecessary action that created bitter disputes between the French & English citizens, which…

one move another can tell what one is about to do. Basically stating that if a man walks behind you, and he’s tall, bulky, he will either rape you, mug you, or even do something worse. “They seemed to have set their faces on neutral, and with their purse straps strung across their chests bandolier-style, they forge ahead as though bracing themselves against being tackled” (Staples). Staples describes a body language that a women would so if someone is to follow her. A women would grab her purse…

Cool is a simple word that we use in our everyday lives as human beings. Despite it being such a simple word, it has wide-spread of meanings throughout the world. Some meanings are considered formal while some are consider slang. Some present a positive connotation while others present a negative connotation. Some uses of the word cool are used more often than others. The dictionary actually has a total of twenty-six definitions, all of them are correct, but the order of these definitions should…