Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: With me is always a Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
Speaker 1: there's Jerry and the three of us together our Stuff
Speaker 1: you should Know. Hey, buddy, he's going there. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: going pretty good. I have to say this was one
Speaker 1: of the better articles I've read in recent memory. Wow
Speaker 1: by Mr Jonathan Strickland, our nemesis at text Stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wrote a great article on sign language arch nemesis
Speaker 1: who knew. Yeah, I had no idea that he knew anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like there's, uh, there's nothing about the future of
Speaker 1: sign language and here it's just sign language. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: this is one of those where I knew really not
Speaker 1: much about it and it was just a delight to learn,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and uh, he basically just did American
Speaker 1: sign language. Yeah. I have the impression that if he'd
Speaker 1: tried to expand it, it would have really gotten unwieldy quick.
Speaker 1: So it's a good editorial decision, good writing. Well, that's
Speaker 1: one of the things I didn't know. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know that that there are hundreds of sign languages. I
Speaker 1: kind of thought it was all the same. But he
Speaker 1: makes a point even that you may be better able
Speaker 1: to communicate with someone speaking French sign language because that
Speaker 1: was the basis of American sign language than to speak
Speaker 1: sign language if you're American with someone speaking British sign language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's just different. Sharing a common spoken language with
Speaker 1: another country does not mean there's nothing to do with
Speaker 1: that there that they share common sign language. No, um.
Speaker 1: And that's a really good point because it reveals that
Speaker 1: the death community has over time just basically said we're
Speaker 1: gonna do this ourselves. Yeah. And it even gets to
Speaker 1: the point where regional dialects just like a regular spoken language.
Speaker 1: It basically just as a regular language. The more I
Speaker 1: read it, the morrow is like, this is just like
Speaker 1: speaking English or speaking so othern English or Midwestern English.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah. And you know, depending on your community,
Speaker 1: the community you're raised in, the type of house you're
Speaker 1: raised in. Um, that's what will necessitate what kind of
Speaker 1: sign language you learn or develop or whatever. Yeah, it is, um.
Speaker 1: And well let's talk about the history of this a
Speaker 1: little bit first. So Chuck, you know, humans have a
Speaker 1: long and storied history of mistreating groups that are different
Speaker 1: from everybody else. It's what makes America great, not just America.
Speaker 1: It goes back even for the humanity, the the deaf community. UM.
Speaker 1: Up until shamefully recently, Um, we're kind of one of
Speaker 1: those groups that were just kind of mistreated. Um. The Torah,
Speaker 1: for example, forbids deaf people from fully participating in some
Speaker 1: of the rituals in the temple. Um. The ancient Greeks
Speaker 1: wouldn't allow deaf people to be educated. Uh. St Augustine,
Speaker 1: Saint Augustine, he's a saint for goodness sake, he taught
Speaker 1: that deaf people were evidence that God was angry at
Speaker 1: their parents. Wow. Yeah. It wasn't until about the Renaissance
Speaker 1: that anybody finally took a stab at educating deaf people.
Speaker 1: And they found pretty quickly that oh, they just can't hear.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, right, they can learn very quickly and
Speaker 1: h just like you and me. So that kind of
Speaker 1: became the springboard once people figured out that you can't
Speaker 1: educate deaf people to them being included more into a
Speaker 1: normal society. Um. But for a long time they were mistreated. Uh,
Speaker 1: and as a result, I think they kind of um,
Speaker 1: well I'm speculating here, but I think they kind of
Speaker 1: said we're gonna handle this ourselves. Like I said, like,
Speaker 1: we're going to develop our own language, take matters into
Speaker 1: our own hands. Literally. Yeah, And um, that's where signed
Speaker 1: languages started to come from. Just necessities, the mother of inventions.
Speaker 1: You need to be able to communicate with people around you,
Speaker 1: and so sign language developed in communities where there were
Speaker 1: deaf people who were accepted and not just kind of
Speaker 1: put to the side. Yeah, before it was even uh,
Speaker 1: they were getting official with it. People were using sign
Speaker 1: language right because they were like, well, I don't care
Speaker 1: if you're gonna make it some official language or not.
Speaker 1: We need to talk to each other exactly. We're gonna
Speaker 1: figure it out. And not only do they need to
Speaker 1: talk to each other, they need to talk to the
Speaker 1: community at large as well. And there's actually this really
Speaker 1: cool story on Martha's Vineyard. There was up to a
Speaker 1: quarter of the population when they moved over here from England.
Speaker 1: Um they were an isolated population. So um there they
Speaker 1: suffered what was called the founder's effect, where the population
Speaker 1: just kind of bottlenecked. And these families and are married,
Speaker 1: but they didn't marry outside of their group. So deafness
Speaker 1: was hereditary. Deafness was a a trade that was passed
Speaker 1: along the group. So up to a quarter one and
Speaker 1: four people in this community were death right. As a
Speaker 1: result of this community on Martha's Vineyard in the early
Speaker 1: eighteenth century having up to a quarter of its population death,
Speaker 1: a specific type of sign language called Martha's Vineyard Sign
Speaker 1: Language developed, and not only were the death in the
Speaker 1: community proficient, and everybody in the community was proficient in it,
Speaker 1: and up until nineteen fifty two when the last death
Speaker 1: Martha's Vineyard resident, Martha's Vineyard board resident died, that's when
Speaker 1: it became extinct. So they were practicing it from about
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred to nineteen fifty two. And apparently um Oliver
Speaker 1: Sacks went and interviewed some of these people for part
Speaker 1: of a book. Man He's always on it, he is,
Speaker 1: um and uh he's He reported that some of these elders,
Speaker 1: these Martha's Vineyard elders um reverted to sign language while
Speaker 1: they were talking, and so they were coming in and
Speaker 1: out of speech and sign language and apparently weren't even
Speaker 1: a where that they were doing it. That's awesome, and
Speaker 1: they were not deaf. That might be the fact of
Speaker 1: the show Martha's Vineyard time language. Yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: one of them. I think there's a bunch in here. Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1: Uh So, if we're talking about history, we have to
Speaker 1: go back to the early eighteen hundreds, uh to a
Speaker 1: dude named Thomas Hopkins Galladet and Um. He was a
Speaker 1: minister to the deaf, and he went to Europe because,
Speaker 1: like we said, in France is where it's sort of
Speaker 1: originated officially, and he wanted to learn some techniques on
Speaker 1: how to teach this stuff. I met a guy named
Speaker 1: Roche ambrose Q Curon Cicard who was in Abbe. It's
Speaker 1: a title. He's like a clergyman. Um. He was the
Speaker 1: director of the School of the Deaf in Paris, and
Speaker 1: he learned some stuff from him, and then plucked one
Speaker 1: of his students, Laurence Clerk, and said, Hey, there's big
Speaker 1: money in this, let's go start a school in the
Speaker 1: United States. That probably wasn't his motivation, although you never know,
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with making a little money by starting a
Speaker 1: cool sure. Uh So they established the American School for
Speaker 1: the Deaf in eighteen seventeen in uh Hotford, Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: UM went on like they incorporated what they learned in
Speaker 1: France with what was already going on in the United States, right,
Speaker 1: which is why, like you said, Um, if you were
Speaker 1: an American sign language speaker and you go to France
Speaker 1: and you're speaking with a French sign language speaker, you'll
Speaker 1: probably be successful because American sign language is partially rooted
Speaker 1: in French sign language. Yeah, more so than like going
Speaker 1: to England. This so weird to think about. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And they ended up founding as well, Gallaudet University and
Speaker 1: d C Go Bisons, Is that right? Yeah, they got
Speaker 1: a football team. I played for the Beverly Bisons in
Speaker 1: elementary school. Really, I'm a Bison. It's pretty cool though,
Speaker 1: they got a football team all deaf and or hard
Speaker 1: of hearing. And it's cool to watch the video, like
Speaker 1: you know, the coaches given like the motivational speech and
Speaker 1: he's signing at the same time and it's not this
Speaker 1: thing is kind of neat. That is cool. And I
Speaker 1: thought about this too. Probably not affected by home field
Speaker 1: advantage or not. Oh the noise, yeah, I wonder though,
Speaker 1: like the tremble nous of it, of that much the sound,
Speaker 1: this sound waves, the physical waves hitting you well, but yeah, true,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same as you know, NFL teams
Speaker 1: when they go to visit like Seattle, they have they
Speaker 1: work out all these sign language uh for each other. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see it. You know what I'm saying. I thought
Speaker 1: you might getting psyched out by like the crowd noise. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, like not being able to hear when you're
Speaker 1: changing a play at the line of scrimmage. That these
Speaker 1: signs and these guys are like, UM. So anyway, go
Speaker 1: bisonce uh. And that is a school of more than
Speaker 1: students today, although they're not all death. About five UM
Speaker 1: may consist of hearing students, which I thought was interesting
Speaker 1: because I guess it's just you know, it's good school, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. And it says here in the article that
Speaker 1: there was a controversy among the students and some of
Speaker 1: the faculty, and I looked it up and apparently there
Speaker 1: was a an incoming president in like the mid two
Speaker 1: thousand's who was born death but it had been raised
Speaker 1: to um to speak rather than sign, and apparently most
Speaker 1: of the students were not very happy about that because
Speaker 1: they didn't think she was planning on emphasizing sign language,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to make sure that sign language was
Speaker 1: like the the um the main method of communication. Interesting. Um, so,
Speaker 1: like we said, we're gonna be talking about ASL mainly,
Speaker 1: which has its own grammar and syntax and phonology, which
Speaker 1: if you're talking about speaking, it's a study of sounds,
Speaker 1: which I'm not signing. It is the hand movements and
Speaker 1: signals and motions. Phonology. Yeah, yeah, it's the It's how
Speaker 1: in the sixties some researcher discovered that sign language isn't
Speaker 1: made up of a distinct sign for everything, right, there's
Speaker 1: a discrete set of hand gestures, movements that you can
Speaker 1: change and alter to make different words or concepts, and
Speaker 1: that that would be phonology. Right. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like I don't think we pointed out sign language. American
Speaker 1: sign language is not literally trying to translate each word
Speaker 1: someone speaks. It's about the concept and getting the point
Speaker 1: across of what someone is saying. And we'll get into
Speaker 1: that it'll make more sense in a minute. So, but
Speaker 1: that's phonology and phonology as far as speech goes, would
Speaker 1: be syllables, yeah, sounds, this is like hand like in
Speaker 1: a gesture or whatever. Uh. And morphology, which if you're speaking,
Speaker 1: that is how words are formed from basic sounds, and
Speaker 1: in sign language that's the way you're uh. Hand and
Speaker 1: motions represent the concepts. Okay, so that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you were saying that American sign language is not
Speaker 1: follow English necessarily if it doesn't follow English. In fact,
Speaker 1: they try to avoid sounding like English. Yeah, like they
Speaker 1: abandoned English syntax. They there's no use of the word
Speaker 1: am or be um. It's pretty simple and straightforward. And
Speaker 1: some of the stuff also are some of the signs
Speaker 1: are conceptual, like there there are some that are symbolic,
Speaker 1: but some are like a concept or an icon. I
Speaker 1: guess it's a better way to put it, like um,
Speaker 1: if you are doing dear, if you're saying the word deer,
Speaker 1: signing the word deer um er animal, you put your
Speaker 1: you stick your fingers up and put them close to
Speaker 1: your head, right. Yeah. So I was curious, like how
Speaker 1: you would sign the word moose. Yeah, and I looked.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing, but rather than having them up
Speaker 1: against your head, they're out off to the side a
Speaker 1: little bit because the moose has like antlers that are
Speaker 1: bigger than a deer. Well, and that illustrates a very
Speaker 1: important point with a s l um it's not just
Speaker 1: the things the signs you make with your hands, it's
Speaker 1: body language expressions, uh. And the space. How you use
Speaker 1: the space around you. Like to take the antlers away
Speaker 1: from your head represent something and as we'll learn later,
Speaker 1: where you hold your hands represent different things, like further
Speaker 1: away from your body or closer to your body. Um.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to all that, but um, basic nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts they are. You can call them speakers even
Speaker 1: though they're signing. Uh. But generally you call the person
Speaker 1: receiving the sign at the time, the receiver, the person
Speaker 1: being spoken to, Yeah, and the receiver. If you're a receiver,
Speaker 1: you don't just stare at the hands. In fact, you
Speaker 1: don't focus on the hands at all. You focus on
Speaker 1: their face and sort of keep the hands in the periphery.
Speaker 1: That's how um. The remember the did you hear about
Speaker 1: the guy who was signing at Mandela's memorial? Thought that
Speaker 1: was going to be your intro. Actually I went with
Speaker 1: the mistreating people intros to you know, I like that,
Speaker 1: Um the Yeah, this guy was a fraudulent UM sign translator.
Speaker 1: Now was he really? Did they get? Because I thought
Speaker 1: he was like, no, I'm not fraudulent, I'm just he Uh,
Speaker 1: what's unclear is so he was he's he suffers from schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: and UM he was hired on officially to do this
Speaker 1: UM and they think that the way he was hired
Speaker 1: was because his rate was about half of what an
Speaker 1: a normal sign translator that would have been, So they
Speaker 1: basically just went with the cheaper option and didn't do
Speaker 1: their due diligence and figure him out because he'd actually
Speaker 1: done this before where he doesn't know sign language and
Speaker 1: apparently has no malicious intent or anything like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he just needed money, or if he
Speaker 1: thinks he know sign language, or if he wants to
Speaker 1: know sign language he feels like he can get it across.
Speaker 1: But during Mandela's funeral, UM he was doing all the
Speaker 1: sign language and it was total nonsense. So none of
Speaker 1: it was real at all. No, it was utter gibberish
Speaker 1: and one of the one of the ways that the
Speaker 1: UM the deaf community, who were understandably upset at all this.
Speaker 1: I bet some of them got a good laugh, sure,
Speaker 1: but overall they said, if you're doing sign you don't
Speaker 1: just sit there with like a stone face, which this
Speaker 1: guy was doing. He was all hand gesters, and hand
Speaker 1: gesters didn't mean anything. But then also, you express most
Speaker 1: of sign language with expressions, with facial expressions. With movement,
Speaker 1: you don't just stand there because it doesn't do anything.
Speaker 1: You're not getting your point across. So this guy one
Speaker 1: of the ways he was found out. Uh, he was
Speaker 1: like stone face and if you go and look at it,
Speaker 1: he's not moving his face at all, like he's completely solemn.
Speaker 1: He was found out pretty quick too. Yeah, because I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are people watching it. You're like, what this
Speaker 1: what's going on? This guy's talking gibberish? So weird. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you were signing actions a lot of times but
Speaker 1: not always, you just mimic the action like um. Strickling
Speaker 1: points out, if you want to sign eat, you hold
Speaker 1: your finger and thumb like you're holding like a little
Speaker 1: piece of chocolate and you go to put it in
Speaker 1: your mouth. That means eat, pretty straightforward. And there There's
Speaker 1: also something I think it's kind of neat inefficient about
Speaker 1: um sign language. Is that the same that same sign
Speaker 1: for eat um is all it doubles for other signs
Speaker 1: to depending on what you do with it. Yeah, can
Speaker 1: get confusing. It can, but it's also it's it's I
Speaker 1: don't know, I like it makes it makes the whole
Speaker 1: thing more elegant to me that you one sign, when
Speaker 1: delivered in a certain way, changes the meaning and you
Speaker 1: can't you really have to pay attention. Yeah, for instance, uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to sign food, it is the same.
Speaker 1: A lot of times you will double a sign to
Speaker 1: indicate something else to indicate it now, Well, it depends.
Speaker 1: That's why it can confusing. So design for food is
Speaker 1: the same as doubling the sign for eat. But if
Speaker 1: you want to sign eating uh, which is a verb,
Speaker 1: you would uh also repeat the eat signs. So that's
Speaker 1: where if you're receiving sign language, you understand it. It's
Speaker 1: all about your context, you know, like, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Yeah, what do you mean? You guys went
Speaker 1: out and you were food? Exactly right. I should teach
Speaker 1: you somethings would be fun, um, but I need to
Speaker 1: learn it first. But apparently, also the the the verbs
Speaker 1: or action words or signs are are bigger, whereas nouns
Speaker 1: are smaller. Like the gestures are bigger or smaller, depending
Speaker 1: on whether it's a noun or verb. Too, that's true,
Speaker 1: that's that's another way. So again, you can't just sit
Speaker 1: there with your hands directly in front of you, moving
Speaker 1: within a very small box. Yeah, it's your You wouldn't
Speaker 1: be speaking at least as far as American sign language goes,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be speaking correctly. That's true. U. There is
Speaker 1: an alphabet too, as every thirteen year old girl knows, right,
Speaker 1: Why don't you remember that? Like it seems like in
Speaker 1: like the seventh grade, every girl I knew went through
Speaker 1: a phase where they learned that the sign alphabet and
Speaker 1: would like spell out things with their friends that no
Speaker 1: one else knew they were talking about? What you never
Speaker 1: saw that? No? Oh man, I remember the big, bubbly
Speaker 1: cursive writing. Yeah. Yeah, I just seem to remember a
Speaker 1: lot of young girls learning the sign language alphabet and
Speaker 1: they would sit around and spell things about people and
Speaker 1: had not run into that, not in Fala. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was a Georgia thing. Anyway, there's an alphabet which actually
Speaker 1: where you you know, it's called fingerspelling, but it's only
Speaker 1: used to um illustrated really specific concept or to indicate
Speaker 1: like a person spell a name. Yeah, Like if you're
Speaker 1: gonna be telling a story about Josh, are you gotta
Speaker 1: do is spell out Josh at the beginning, and then
Speaker 1: you don't have to keep doing it over and over right. Um.
Speaker 1: One way to do that too, especially if I'm not present,
Speaker 1: is to indicate an empty space by you, Yeah, spell
Speaker 1: out my name, point to that empty space, and then
Speaker 1: from that point on, anytime you point at the empty space,
Speaker 1: you're seeing Josh. Yeah. If you're there, it's called index
Speaker 1: and use your finger. You just point to Josh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're not there, you just make an imaginary Josh,
Speaker 1: and you keep pointing to that space to refer to Josh.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. Um. Another reason that you would use
Speaker 1: finger spelling would be to ask somebody what a sign
Speaker 1: was for something you couldn't remember. So if you're saying
Speaker 1: something you you and you couldn't think of moose, you
Speaker 1: might spell out and finger spelling, what's the sign for moose? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then they would say hey, fingers up away from
Speaker 1: the head, Yeah, I wrote at wrote I read an
Speaker 1: article from the Washington Post earlier about UM Washington d C.
Speaker 1: They call him terps interpreters. I hadn't heard. Are you
Speaker 1: sure they weren't talking about University of Maryland. They were
Speaker 1: talking about you know, but uh, it's a big deal
Speaker 1: in d C. There's like on any given day there's
Speaker 1: like fift people in d C signing for clients that yeah, worse.
Speaker 1: It makes sense because it's law. First of all, federal
Speaker 1: law requires reasonable accommodation for a deaf person. But um,
Speaker 1: this one guy that they interviewed, uh, what's his name, Painter,
Speaker 1: He said that spelling is you're you're like your back door,
Speaker 1: like if ever, and it's it's tough in DC because
Speaker 1: he's like, basically, try signing a speech by Bernanky when
Speaker 1: they're saying like very d C specific political jargon that
Speaker 1: may you know, maybe not have a concept you can represent,
Speaker 1: like fiscal cliff or it's not your first rodeo, or
Speaker 1: kick it down the road a little bit. And so
Speaker 1: they basically invented political jargon for people to do that.
Speaker 1: And he said, or if you get stuck, you can
Speaker 1: always just spell it. And that appears to be a
Speaker 1: hallmark of sign language, is um there like new signs
Speaker 1: are created all the time, just like a few words
Speaker 1: are created all the time. And just like with speech,
Speaker 1: um there are prescriptive and there's descriptivists like people who
Speaker 1: say no, American sign language is sacrosanct. It is what
Speaker 1: it is. It's not to be added to. If you
Speaker 1: add to it, it dilutes the language. Go come up
Speaker 1: with your own language if you want to add fiscal
Speaker 1: cliff to it. Um. And then there's other people who
Speaker 1: are descriptivists who say no, the language is a living, breathing,
Speaker 1: evolving thing, and we need to get the concept of
Speaker 1: fiscal cliff along across. So here it is. It looks
Speaker 1: like moose kind of. I would just do a little
Speaker 1: guy walking then falling off a cliff, sure you know,
Speaker 1: and then making a dollar sign. Uh. If you have
Speaker 1: seen people do sign language and you see them looking
Speaker 1: upset or puffing their cheeks out or raising their eyebrows, uh,
Speaker 1: they're indicating an inflection that what's called a non manual marker. So,
Speaker 1: um like, if you wanted to ask someone, and that's
Speaker 1: also true punctuation, if you wanted to, you could do
Speaker 1: the little question mark sign, but more likely you would
Speaker 1: just say the sentence and then raise your eye brows. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: give him an example, um like movies, Do you like
Speaker 1: the movies? Right? You would say you like movies and
Speaker 1: then raise your eyebrows like, huh. You basically like a
Speaker 1: rush and you like movies. That's basically what's going on there.
Speaker 1: Any yaka sarf reference is hilarious. It doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: it is. Jever see the King of the Hill that
Speaker 1: he co starred on No Way. They go to Branson
Speaker 1: and like he uh, I think Bobby like ends up
Speaker 1: hanging out with him. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Um. Another
Speaker 1: way you can modify a sign, there's basically a couple
Speaker 1: of ways you can modify action. Um. It is by directionalizing.
Speaker 1: So if you you know, I had a nice leisurely meal,
Speaker 1: you would do the symbols for the signs for eating
Speaker 1: very slowly. If you want to tell someone I had
Speaker 1: to wolf it down real quick because it was like
Speaker 1: for a meeting, you would just do the signs for
Speaker 1: eating very fast. It's pretty easy, yes. Or if you
Speaker 1: wanted to say I'm going to give a gift to you,
Speaker 1: you would just do the signs for uh, give gift
Speaker 1: and then you know, indicate that I'm giving it to
Speaker 1: you or to someone else. The direction of it is
Speaker 1: going from I to you, So it's implied right there,
Speaker 1: give gift is going from I to you, I give
Speaker 1: you a gift. It really cuts through all the jibber jabber.
Speaker 1: I kind of like it. It really does. And there's
Speaker 1: also um rules with syntax are just totally out the
Speaker 1: window in relation to English too, it's um. There's something
Speaker 1: called the topic of the sentence, and that's frequently a
Speaker 1: pronoun like I, and it genuinely doesn't matter where that goes.
Speaker 1: You can go at the beginning of a sentence, the
Speaker 1: end of the sentence, or both. And I haven't figured
Speaker 1: out where I where both comes from? Why you would
Speaker 1: say the pronouns twice? So for example, like UM, I
Speaker 1: am an employee here right, you would just say employee
Speaker 1: or employee I or I employee I, And I can't
Speaker 1: figure out. Hopefully somebody out there can let us know
Speaker 1: why you would want to say What the purposes for
Speaker 1: saying it twice? But it's it's allowable structure wise interesting.
Speaker 1: So within that structure, UM, I think you said it
Speaker 1: was topic comment structure. Generally the comment is the predicate.
Speaker 1: Uh So, man, this took me like down memory lane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, what's the predicate again? It says something
Speaker 1: about the topic or the um object. If you were
Speaker 1: talking about English uh. And then there's the tents. Of course,
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about when something happened, you
Speaker 1: can do it in a variety of ways, but generally
Speaker 1: you would announce the tents at the beginning, and then
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to keep saying it over and over
Speaker 1: that you're like speaking in the past tense right until
Speaker 1: you say until you change tense. So you would start
Speaker 1: by saying yesterday, uh, and then you would start talking
Speaker 1: about how you went to the store or and you
Speaker 1: saw this trans am and you're like, hey, that's a
Speaker 1: great trans am to the guy and he said thanks
Speaker 1: a lot. Uh. But then today, so then you'd sign today,
Speaker 1: I saw the trans am again and it had gotten
Speaker 1: an offender bender, right, and it was sad. Right. So
Speaker 1: in in the middle you have you've signed today, and
Speaker 1: it's changed tense. So the tens is it's this is
Speaker 1: something you have to pay attention to, Like sign language,
Speaker 1: American sign language relies on you to be a smart,
Speaker 1: non lazy person because you have to pay attention. You
Speaker 1: have to keep up with what you're saying, so you
Speaker 1: can't just you know, drift off or you know, just
Speaker 1: start staring into the middle. Focus you know, like you
Speaker 1: have to be paying attention. Um, And it's not just
Speaker 1: because you're watching the signs or anything like that. Like
Speaker 1: it can change and switch very suddenly, going from yesterday
Speaker 1: to today and then everything after that stays the same,
Speaker 1: and you have to look for it change intense so
Speaker 1: you don't miss it and get confused. Yeah, and they're
Speaker 1: quick too, and and it relies on you to understand
Speaker 1: context as well. So for example, you if you were saying, um,
Speaker 1: I had lunch today, I went out for lunch today. Um,
Speaker 1: you can even speak it in English, I went out
Speaker 1: for lunch this afternoon. Okay, Um, you would say today,
Speaker 1: I go to lunch is what you would say in
Speaker 1: sign language. And depending on when you were saying it,
Speaker 1: the person the receiver would know what you were talking about.
Speaker 1: If you were talking about in the morning, they would know, oh,
Speaker 1: you're going out to lunch this afternoon, or if you
Speaker 1: were talking to them that night, they would know, oh,
Speaker 1: well you're saying you went to lunch already this afternoon.
Speaker 1: Now you're going to you already went It's all context
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, like you said earlier, you won't get
Speaker 1: confused if you're if you're understanding what they're saying. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: that I said makes total sense, doesn't it. It really does.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's smart. Yeah, we talked about using the space. Um,
Speaker 1: if you sign close to the body, it might have
Speaker 1: been something that happened uh recently, or might happen soon.
Speaker 1: If you sign further out, maybe it was something that
Speaker 1: happened a long time ago, or might happen away far
Speaker 1: in the future. Again, super interesting and smart, and that
Speaker 1: kind of runs into the calendar that some sinists report
Speaker 1: around them all the time. I thought of that same thing.
Speaker 1: Didn't it make you think of that totally? I wonder
Speaker 1: if Strickling did that on purpose. He is an evil genius. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, So I think maybe we should take a
Speaker 1: message break and then get to the etiquette of sign language.
Speaker 1: All right, Chuck, where you're gonna talk about Mr Manners etiquette? Yes,
Speaker 1: there is etiquette like with regular speaking language. Um, you
Speaker 1: need to wait for the speaker to finish signing, and
Speaker 1: then they'll look at you and says you're turned to speak.
Speaker 1: If they look away, they're they're still talking. They're signing.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. I know what you're saying,
Speaker 1: So don't take that as your cue to jump in there.
Speaker 1: In fact that can be rude, they will actually give
Speaker 1: you the signal that it's it's time for you to respond. Right.
Speaker 1: But um, if you watch two people who are signing
Speaker 1: with one another kind of frantically arguing, yeah, that they
Speaker 1: that's one was a tactic in an argument using sign language,
Speaker 1: you don't wait until the person stops and points to
Speaker 1: you could just cut in. What you're doing is interrupting them. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Another thing that you that might happen if you are
Speaker 1: a receiver of sign language is the person signing might
Speaker 1: suddenly turn and start signing to somebody who isn't there.
Speaker 1: So you're not supposed to take a couple of steps
Speaker 1: over right. They they know where you're standing. What they're
Speaker 1: saying is that they they're basically saying like, um, and
Speaker 1: then I was talking to Todd and this is Todd
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this is what I was saying
Speaker 1: to Todd. Right, So they're not they're not addressing they're
Speaker 1: addressing you still, but they're talking about how what they
Speaker 1: said to Todd, yeah, or what Todd said. If Todd
Speaker 1: said that he has a sore back, you would look
Speaker 1: at the imaginary Todd and say, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you would say, probably back sore or sore back. But
Speaker 1: the the the the proper etiquette there to just keep
Speaker 1: watching their their facial expression and gestures just like they
Speaker 1: are talking to you. Yeah. Um, you don't just wander
Speaker 1: off right if you see uh. If you have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with any of this and you just see
Speaker 1: two people signing on the street, um, they say. According
Speaker 1: to Dr Bill Vickers, who owns a company, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: he's president of a company that creates UH sign language programs.
Speaker 1: He said, it's not rude to walk between them. Um
Speaker 1: if you just kind of just walk quickly between them
Speaker 1: and like, it's no big deal. So there's that, right,
Speaker 1: But you don't want to be like, yeah, sorry, sorry,
Speaker 1: if you buddy, you see me, I'm about to walk
Speaker 1: in here, so you just go through, yeah, Or I
Speaker 1: would say, just go around if you can. That's Chuck's recommendation.
Speaker 1: Go around, you know, Like I wouldn't walk between two
Speaker 1: people having a conversation either, Yeah, speaking conversation. That's actually
Speaker 1: I thought that was a little rude too, But apparently
Speaker 1: deaf people are cool with it all right, So good
Speaker 1: to know, so chuck um. We talked about American Sign language,
Speaker 1: and obviously that's far from the only sign language in
Speaker 1: the world. There's hundreds, but in the States, um, American
Speaker 1: Sign language is the dominant sign language. But there's other
Speaker 1: types of sign languages that are also practiced enough to
Speaker 1: warrant mentioning. Here one is signed Exact English. Man. This
Speaker 1: sounds tough. It is because it's slow. One of the
Speaker 1: advantages of American Sign language is that it gets rid
Speaker 1: of a lot of the crud. So like you just
Speaker 1: say give gift, and by the direction you're moving, you
Speaker 1: get the point across that I give you a gift. Um,
Speaker 1: all of these other things that you can do with
Speaker 1: the gesture, you're cutting out two, three, four words in
Speaker 1: a sentence, this whole thing. And I feel like I
Speaker 1: wasted a lot of WORKDS we do, especially in English,
Speaker 1: and English is a very strange, technically difficult language, and
Speaker 1: American Sign language gets rid of a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Or I should say it doesn't get rid of it,
Speaker 1: it evolved without that stuff. Yeah, that's about um. And
Speaker 1: Signed Exact English is like trying to literally get English
Speaker 1: across and all of its weird syntax and order and
Speaker 1: I am and B and is UM using sign language,
Speaker 1: so it's it can be very slow. Yeah, like UM,
Speaker 1: in a s L, if you wanted to sign beautiful,
Speaker 1: that could mean pretty, beautiful, lovely to look at um.
Speaker 1: But they get specific with signed exactly English. You would
Speaker 1: actually if you want to say someone was pretty and
Speaker 1: not beautiful, you might sign the letter P and then
Speaker 1: the sign the A L signed for beautiful, which I
Speaker 1: guess is you know, if you're being set up on
Speaker 1: a date, you might want to get specific, right, she
Speaker 1: was beautiful, No, I said she was lovely? Man, what's
Speaker 1: the sign for good personality? Um? And and Strictland points
Speaker 1: out that hearing teachers who interact with deaf children prefer
Speaker 1: signed exact English to a s L because I guess
Speaker 1: just when you're at that stage in life to match
Speaker 1: up with the English spoken language, they think that has
Speaker 1: some benefit. Well, yeah, there's a UM. I guess. One
Speaker 1: way of looking at educating deaf children is this whole
Speaker 1: immersed education. Yeah, UM, where it's like you learned speech reading,
Speaker 1: which lip reading, UM, you learn sign language, you learn
Speaker 1: to speak, UM, you learn finger spelling, right, you learned reading,
Speaker 1: because that's another thing too. If you just are raised
Speaker 1: on American sign language, you're to have trouble reading English
Speaker 1: because you're gonna you're gonna say, what is be? What
Speaker 1: it is? What are all these extra words? What's with
Speaker 1: the syntax? It's that Gonda makes sense. So there is
Speaker 1: definitely a school of thought among educators that if you
Speaker 1: have a deaf kid, um you they should learn everything,
Speaker 1: including sign language, but also all the other stuff so
Speaker 1: they can effectively communicate with non sign language non signers. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's opposed as opposed to someone who loses their
Speaker 1: hearing later in life. No, I think that's opposed to
Speaker 1: people who think, like, well or a deaf community and
Speaker 1: sign language is enough for us. We don't have to
Speaker 1: know how to speak. We like, why doesn't Why don't
Speaker 1: hearing kids learn sign language? Why is it on us
Speaker 1: that we have to learn all this every extra stuff?
Speaker 1: Why is there not a balance? So I think that
Speaker 1: that's UM part. I think those are two camps. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's the whole thing, but I think
Speaker 1: some people think you should learn everything, where other people
Speaker 1: are like sign language is good enough. Interesting, Uh, well
Speaker 1: there's one more we'll get to in a second. Um.
Speaker 1: Called Pigeon Signed English right after this message break al Right.
Speaker 1: So Pigeon Signed English, which is what we were talking about,
Speaker 1: is the other common uh form of sign language in
Speaker 1: the United States. And I don't fully understand this one,
Speaker 1: do you. Uh. It seems to be uh the middle
Speaker 1: ground between signed Exact English and American Sign language. So
Speaker 1: they try to follow English syntax, but they don't have
Speaker 1: like b okay, so there wouldn't so there wouldn't be like, um,
Speaker 1: like I give you a gift, right, it might just
Speaker 1: be like I give you gift, you know. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes more sense. Yeah. Uh. They they do not
Speaker 1: require in Pigeon Signed English UM prefixes and suffixes like
Speaker 1: they do in s E uh. And they say it
Speaker 1: can be easier to learn than either one or the
Speaker 1: other two versions because it does match up with English syntax. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you if you're one of those educators who
Speaker 1: thinks that kids should learn everything, um, you would be
Speaker 1: teaching C or I imagine at least pigeon sign Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they say you can speak out loud and sign
Speaker 1: at the same time easier because you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: ahead or fall behind because it'll match up more yea
Speaker 1: makes sense. And then there's UM. There was a push because,
Speaker 1: like we said, if you if you're deaf and a
Speaker 1: speaker of American sign language and you go to Great Britain,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna have trouble communicating, just like an English
Speaker 1: speaker would have in France. Yeah, what's a garage on
Speaker 1: our lift. So so there was this push in the
Speaker 1: mid twentieth century to create an international sign language. That's
Speaker 1: what I thought. Everything was UM and the the inner Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of did too. Yeah, I was very uh
Speaker 1: naive about all this. Yeah, same here. UM. The American
Speaker 1: or international sign language was. It came out of them,
Speaker 1: the World Congress of the World Federation of the Death
Speaker 1: from They said, let's do this, and then twenty two
Speaker 1: years later they got around to doing it, and they
Speaker 1: created something called just do no you should say it
Speaker 1: just stilling them. Yeah, and that it's an Italian word
Speaker 1: that means unified sign language appropriately enough, and I think
Speaker 1: Strickland says, it's very much like the spoken language esperanto. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it exists, some people know it, but it is very
Speaker 1: far from an international language. Yeah. I looked a little
Speaker 1: more into it. I think they use it at international
Speaker 1: meetings because they kind of probably have to. And um,
Speaker 1: they say it can be useful for like world travelers
Speaker 1: to pick up I guess just like you would visit
Speaker 1: another country to pick up some phrases and things. Gotcha
Speaker 1: to help you out. But yeah, it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: are from codified, right do you say codified or codified codified? God?
Speaker 1: All right? Uh? And then there's babies speaking sign language.
Speaker 1: And I want to say, if you want to see
Speaker 1: a creepy picture of a baby, check out this article
Speaker 1: on how stuff works dot com How Sign Language Works.
Speaker 1: I missed that on the last page the baby sign
Speaker 1: language page is a picture of a baby signing and
Speaker 1: it's staring right at the camera. It looks way too
Speaker 1: young to like be thinking the things it's obviously thinking
Speaker 1: murderous thoughts. He looks like he's doing karate to me,
Speaker 1: but look at his face though, it's like a scary kid.
Speaker 1: Sinister it's a great word. So um that is uh
Speaker 1: baby sign language. Well, yeah, there's a school of thought that, um,
Speaker 1: if you start your baby out before they can speak
Speaker 1: English words or whatever words, that you are going to
Speaker 1: get them ahead in life by signing things that they need.
Speaker 1: Like teach them to sign for Hungary or Pepe or
Speaker 1: dead your mommy and they say it. About six months,
Speaker 1: kids can start picking this stuff up and learn like
Speaker 1: dozens of words. Yeah, they can learn at a six months,
Speaker 1: but it might take a couple of months before they
Speaker 1: start signing and return, but they're still absorbing it. And um,
Speaker 1: like you said, they learned obvious words that have meaning
Speaker 1: to them in their life. But apparently a lot of
Speaker 1: parents report that their kids once they figure out what
Speaker 1: they're doing, that they're communicating, they want to learn more
Speaker 1: and more and more, which is pretty cool. Um. And
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of concern when this was
Speaker 1: first introduced, uh that kids who were learning sign language
Speaker 1: would become deficient in speech. And they did a study
Speaker 1: and they found out actually the exact opposite is true,
Speaker 1: Like kids who are learning sign languages babies, um, have
Speaker 1: better speech abilities and language abilities than their peers who
Speaker 1: didn't learn it. Interesting that at least one one study
Speaker 1: found but um, these same researchers recommend that if you're
Speaker 1: teaching your kids sign language, um, which I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was a thing, but you mean, and I want
Speaker 1: to go visit a friend of hers and like they
Speaker 1: started signing to their baby, and I was like, what
Speaker 1: is going on with yeah, kind of um And apparently
Speaker 1: it's a thing. I didn't realize it. I had seen
Speaker 1: it before. But they're saying, if you teach your kid,
Speaker 1: you're hearing child um sign language. We speak the word
Speaker 1: as well. So the kid comes to understand that speaking
Speaker 1: and signing are they're saying the same thing. Okay, so
Speaker 1: there's not there's not a reliance on just one or
Speaker 1: the other. I guess, yeah, I'm glad to know that
Speaker 1: it does lead to better uh speech, maybe later on,
Speaker 1: because when I first saw people doing that, it was
Speaker 1: kind of like I was one of his doubters, like,
Speaker 1: come on, what are you doing really? Yeah, But now
Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah, it makes sense. Plus it's kind
Speaker 1: of cool like if your kid, if you can get
Speaker 1: your seven month old kid to sign things to you,
Speaker 1: it's almost like the same thing, but on the opposite
Speaker 1: end of the timeline of getting messages from the grave.
Speaker 1: You know, like babies can't talk for reasons, they know
Speaker 1: stuff they're not supposed to know. So if your baby
Speaker 1: does the sign for area fifty one, you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: I got one more little fun thing. I was talking
Speaker 1: about the guy in d c Uh Painter is his
Speaker 1: last name. He said that a lot of times they'll
Speaker 1: get hired because they have to get hired, you know,
Speaker 1: to under federal law. But there won't be anyone there
Speaker 1: that's hard of hearing. But they still have to stand
Speaker 1: up there and sign. And he calls that in the
Speaker 1: terms apparently called that air guitar. That's awesome, pretty good. Cool,
Speaker 1: So sign language. Yeah, if you, um have a friend
Speaker 1: who is deaf or hard of hearing and is sign
Speaker 1: language person a signer, I guess, um, and you want
Speaker 1: to ask them how we did. If you go on
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know dot com and go to
Speaker 1: the page for this episode, it will have a full
Speaker 1: transcript for it too, so everybody can check it out. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about this article,
Speaker 1: see the Scary Scary baby. Um. You can type in
Speaker 1: sign language on how Stuff Works dot com and we'll
Speaker 1: bring up Strickland's article. That's right. So there's two websites
Speaker 1: for you to go to Stuff you Should Do dot
Speaker 1: com and how Stuff Works dot com. Boom. And since
Speaker 1: I said to websites, it's time for listener mail. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this h I v um. Hey, guys, are
Speaker 1: recently went to visit family in Louisiana for Christmas break
Speaker 1: from San Francisco, and during a conversation with a quote
Speaker 1: friend from high school, I mentioned the fact that I
Speaker 1: had recently started my medication for HIV AIDS, and this
Speaker 1: quote friend end quote, became visibly uncomfortable and clearly was
Speaker 1: looking for an excuse to leave. I received the text
Speaker 1: later where I was accused of endangering his life by
Speaker 1: not immediately disclosing my status with him, giving amples of
Speaker 1: risky behavior like what if I had drank after you,
Speaker 1: or some microscopic speck of your spit had gotten on
Speaker 1: my face? Two fourteen now, and this is what's going on? Still?
Speaker 1: Have you seen Dallas Biarrus Club yet? No? I can't wait. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was a stark reminder, guys that just how little
Speaker 1: people know still about how HIV works. Uh. Not only
Speaker 1: are neither of those things a possible vector of transmission,
Speaker 1: but modern medication can so effectively eradicate HIV from your
Speaker 1: blood and semen that you're practically not even contagious anymore,
Speaker 1: reducing the risk by as much as ninety I had
Speaker 1: end age AIDS in May and by August my viral
Speaker 1: load was undetectable, that my T cell count was normal,
Speaker 1: but there were complications with medication side effects such as
Speaker 1: liver damage. Um, there's so much information out there about
Speaker 1: HIV that people who don't have it are unaware of.
Speaker 1: When it comes to HIV, ignorance can cause positive people
Speaker 1: some serious pain when the inform it because feel like
Speaker 1: a biohazard. Yeah, and it would be awesome if you
Speaker 1: guys could do an episode how HIV works. And that
Speaker 1: is Jesse in San Francisco and he works with the
Speaker 1: l g B T YES community out there. I can't
Speaker 1: remember where he works, but he was like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: read this and do a podcast on HIV. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a great idea and we should get that
Speaker 1: together forthcoming. That's right, thanks Jesse. Uh yeah to your friends.
Speaker 1: Two four. I remember hearing something. I remember being a kid.
Speaker 1: We were like the generation that was just scared to
Speaker 1: death of AIDS in HIV because we're the ones who
Speaker 1: are like, you know, on the schoolyard when this thing
Speaker 1: was you know, becoming a thing. And um, I remember
Speaker 1: being afraid of that kind of thing and then learning
Speaker 1: as I got a little older, like you'd have to
Speaker 1: drink something like a gallon or two gallons of an
Speaker 1: HIV patients um saliva to possibly contract a try be
Speaker 1: through saliva or something like that. And you're like, I
Speaker 1: just drank a quart, so I'm good. I'm good to go,
Speaker 1: and that and the whole toilet seat thing remember that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember. It's just ridiculous. But I have one for you.
Speaker 1: That's surprising. We'll do a podcast. Not okay, okay, oh man, um,
Speaker 1: that's suspenseful. Okay, So look for an HIV podcast, he agreed.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with Chuck or
Speaker 1: me um, you can get in touch with this via Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's right at s y s K podcast. You can
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: send us an email to stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: and as always, go check out our home on the web,
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
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