forum SignWriting List Forum
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From:  Bill Reese
Date:  Tue Jan 5, 1999  8:24 pm
Subject:  Re: Bilingualism & SignWriting


You mind if I jump in the fray here and help confuse this? :-)

I'm a late-deafened adult. I know English as do the rest of the
late-deafened adults I know. We don't use ASL, even though we are
taking a class in ASL sign language. Our teacher, who is Deaf, has just
about given up on teaching us pure ASL. We simply don't use the signs
in ASL grammar. The way we use it is called CASE, Conceptually Accurate
Signed English. Essentially, we construct English sentences and use ASL
for the concepts or words within that sentence in the English
grammatical order. So we don't sign, "Now Store I go", we sign, "I go
store now" while saying "I am going to the store now". For those of us
who know some English sign, we might sneak in an English sign or two but
they are mainly variations on a similar ASL sign.

So, of course, I would contend that although I am using ASL signs, I am
using them to represent English and, therefore, I really don't know ASL
and can't be termed as bilingual. N'est pas?

Bill

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