WEBVTT - How Sign Language Works 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.520 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:13.720 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.479 With me is always a Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:20.480 there's Jerry and the three of us together our Stuff 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:26.160 you should Know. Hey, buddy, he's going there. Uh, it's 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:28.760 going pretty good. I have to say this was one 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:32.720 of the better articles I've read in recent memory. Wow 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.520 by Mr Jonathan Strickland, our nemesis at text Stuff. Yeah, 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:39.239 he wrote a great article on sign language arch nemesis 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:42.600 who knew. Yeah, I had no idea that he knew anything. Yeah, 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.040 It's like there's, uh, there's nothing about the future of 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:47.360 sign language and here it's just sign language. Yeah. And 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:48.879 this is one of those where I knew really not 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:50.840 much about it and it was just a delight to learn, 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:54.600 you know. Yeah, and uh, he basically just did American 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.760 sign language. Yeah. I have the impression that if he'd 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:01.760 tried to expand it, it would have really gotten unwieldy quick. 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:05.000 So it's a good editorial decision, good writing. Well, that's 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:07.280 one of the things I didn't know. I didn't even 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:11.040 know that that there are hundreds of sign languages. I 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:13.880 kind of thought it was all the same. But he 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.920 makes a point even that you may be better able 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:21.120 to communicate with someone speaking French sign language because that 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:24.199 was the basis of American sign language than to speak 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:28.199 sign language if you're American with someone speaking British sign language. Yeah, 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:32.319 because it's just different. Sharing a common spoken language with 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.360 another country does not mean there's nothing to do with 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:39.000 that there that they share common sign language. No, um. 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:41.440 And that's a really good point because it reveals that 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:45.800 the death community has over time just basically said we're 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:48.840 gonna do this ourselves. Yeah. And it even gets to 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:53.280 the point where regional dialects just like a regular spoken language. 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.680 It basically just as a regular language. The more I 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:58.080 read it, the morrow is like, this is just like 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.240 speaking English or speaking so othern English or Midwestern English. 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:05.320 You know. Yeah. And you know, depending on your community, 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:07.600 the community you're raised in, the type of house you're 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:13.360 raised in. Um, that's what will necessitate what kind of 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:18.240 sign language you learn or develop or whatever. Yeah, it is, um. 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.320 And well let's talk about the history of this a 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:25.079 little bit first. So Chuck, you know, humans have a 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:29.040 long and storied history of mistreating groups that are different 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:33.240 from everybody else. It's what makes America great, not just America. 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:38.160 It goes back even for the humanity, the the deaf community. UM. 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:43.120 Up until shamefully recently, Um, we're kind of one of 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:46.720 those groups that were just kind of mistreated. Um. The Torah, 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:51.360 for example, forbids deaf people from fully participating in some 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:54.880 of the rituals in the temple. Um. The ancient Greeks 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:59.639 wouldn't allow deaf people to be educated. Uh. St Augustine, 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:04.520 Saint Augustine, he's a saint for goodness sake, he taught 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:08.160 that deaf people were evidence that God was angry at 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:12.600 their parents. Wow. Yeah. It wasn't until about the Renaissance 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:16.960 that anybody finally took a stab at educating deaf people. 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:20.799 And they found pretty quickly that oh, they just can't hear. 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:25.359 That's the thing, right, they can learn very quickly and 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:28.799 h just like you and me. So that kind of 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:32.440 became the springboard once people figured out that you can't 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:37.200 educate deaf people to them being included more into a 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:42.040 normal society. Um. But for a long time they were mistreated. Uh, 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:46.400 and as a result, I think they kind of um, 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:49.120 well I'm speculating here, but I think they kind of 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.680 said we're gonna handle this ourselves. Like I said, like, 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.080 we're going to develop our own language, take matters into 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:59.960 our own hands. Literally. Yeah, And um, that's where signed 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:04.640 languages started to come from. Just necessities, the mother of inventions. 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:07.880 You need to be able to communicate with people around you, 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:12.000 and so sign language developed in communities where there were 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:15.640 deaf people who were accepted and not just kind of 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.200 put to the side. Yeah, before it was even uh, 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:21.040 they were getting official with it. People were using sign 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:23.600 language right because they were like, well, I don't care 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:25.320 if you're gonna make it some official language or not. 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:27.440 We need to talk to each other exactly. We're gonna 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:29.120 figure it out. And not only do they need to 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:30.719 talk to each other, they need to talk to the 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:33.400 community at large as well. And there's actually this really 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:36.839 cool story on Martha's Vineyard. There was up to a 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:40.400 quarter of the population when they moved over here from England. 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:45.520 Um they were an isolated population. So um there they 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:49.039 suffered what was called the founder's effect, where the population 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:53.000 just kind of bottlenecked. And these families and are married, 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.440 but they didn't marry outside of their group. So deafness 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:01.839 was hereditary. Deafness was a a trade that was passed 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:03.920 along the group. So up to a quarter one and 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.320 four people in this community were death right. As a 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.080 result of this community on Martha's Vineyard in the early 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.960 eighteenth century having up to a quarter of its population death, 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:17.800 a specific type of sign language called Martha's Vineyard Sign 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.760 Language developed, and not only were the death in the 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:24.159 community proficient, and everybody in the community was proficient in it, 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:28.120 and up until nineteen fifty two when the last death 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:33.960 Martha's Vineyard resident, Martha's Vineyard board resident died, that's when 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.120 it became extinct. So they were practicing it from about 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:40.360 seventeen hundred to nineteen fifty two. And apparently um Oliver 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.320 Sacks went and interviewed some of these people for part 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.480 of a book. Man He's always on it, he is, 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:50.200 um and uh he's He reported that some of these elders, 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:55.400 these Martha's Vineyard elders um reverted to sign language while 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:57.359 they were talking, and so they were coming in and 0:05:57.360 --> 0:05:59.880 out of speech and sign language and apparently weren't even 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:01.800 a where that they were doing it. That's awesome, and 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:03.760 they were not deaf. That might be the fact of 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:07.120 the show Martha's Vineyard time language. Yeah, it could be 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:09.799 one of them. I think there's a bunch in here. Yeah, agreed. 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:13.440 Uh So, if we're talking about history, we have to 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:16.200 go back to the early eighteen hundreds, uh to a 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:20.760 dude named Thomas Hopkins Galladet and Um. He was a 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:23.520 minister to the deaf, and he went to Europe because, 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:25.560 like we said, in France is where it's sort of 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:29.479 originated officially, and he wanted to learn some techniques on 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.039 how to teach this stuff. I met a guy named 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:40.000 Roche ambrose Q Curon Cicard who was in Abbe. It's 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.000 a title. He's like a clergyman. Um. He was the 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:45.440 director of the School of the Deaf in Paris, and 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:47.760 he learned some stuff from him, and then plucked one 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:51.520 of his students, Laurence Clerk, and said, Hey, there's big 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:53.919 money in this, let's go start a school in the 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:58.240 United States. That probably wasn't his motivation, although you never know, 0:06:58.440 --> 0:06:59.920 nothing wrong with making a little money by starting a 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.599 cool sure. Uh So they established the American School for 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:08.239 the Deaf in eighteen seventeen in uh Hotford, Connecticut, and 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.440 UM went on like they incorporated what they learned in 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:14.240 France with what was already going on in the United States, right, 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:16.600 which is why, like you said, Um, if you were 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.400 an American sign language speaker and you go to France 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:22.240 and you're speaking with a French sign language speaker, you'll 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:26.680 probably be successful because American sign language is partially rooted 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.240 in French sign language. Yeah, more so than like going 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:33.040 to England. This so weird to think about. Yeah. Um. 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.440 And they ended up founding as well, Gallaudet University and 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:40.600 d C Go Bisons, Is that right? Yeah, they got 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.120 a football team. I played for the Beverly Bisons in 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:47.640 elementary school. Really, I'm a Bison. It's pretty cool though, 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:51.040 they got a football team all deaf and or hard 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:53.360 of hearing. And it's cool to watch the video, like 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:56.440 you know, the coaches given like the motivational speech and 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:58.760 he's signing at the same time and it's not this 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:00.600 thing is kind of neat. That is cool. And I 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.680 thought about this too. Probably not affected by home field 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:06.840 advantage or not. Oh the noise, yeah, I wonder though, 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:12.280 like the tremble nous of it, of that much the sound, 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:17.960 this sound waves, the physical waves hitting you well, but yeah, true, 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:20.400 but it's not the same as you know, NFL teams 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:22.680 when they go to visit like Seattle, they have they 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:26.640 work out all these sign language uh for each other. Oh, 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:27.880 I see it. You know what I'm saying. I thought 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:30.320 you might getting psyched out by like the crowd noise. No, 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:32.120 I mean, like not being able to hear when you're 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:33.760 changing a play at the line of scrimmage. That these 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:38.480 signs and these guys are like, UM. So anyway, go 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.559 bisonce uh. And that is a school of more than 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:48.280 students today, although they're not all death. About five UM 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:50.880 may consist of hearing students, which I thought was interesting 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:53.720 because I guess it's just you know, it's good school, yeah, 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:56.440 you know. And it says here in the article that 0:08:56.520 --> 0:09:00.559 there was a controversy among the students and some of 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.000 the faculty, and I looked it up and apparently there 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:06.439 was a an incoming president in like the mid two 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:10.840 thousand's who was born death but it had been raised 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:17.040 to um to speak rather than sign, and apparently most 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:19.120 of the students were not very happy about that because 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.960 they didn't think she was planning on emphasizing sign language, 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:25.280 and they wanted to make sure that sign language was 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:33.280 like the the um the main method of communication. Interesting. Um, so, 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:35.440 like we said, we're gonna be talking about ASL mainly, 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:40.839 which has its own grammar and syntax and phonology, which 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:43.200 if you're talking about speaking, it's a study of sounds, 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:45.920 which I'm not signing. It is the hand movements and 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:51.400 signals and motions. Phonology. Yeah, yeah, it's the It's how 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.120 in the sixties some researcher discovered that sign language isn't 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.800 made up of a distinct sign for everything, right, there's 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:06.080 a discrete set of hand gestures, movements that you can 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:10.240 change and alter to make different words or concepts, and 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:12.840 that that would be phonology. Right. Yeah, it's kind of 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.560 like I don't think we pointed out sign language. American 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:19.840 sign language is not literally trying to translate each word 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:22.560 someone speaks. It's about the concept and getting the point 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:24.920 across of what someone is saying. And we'll get into 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:26.680 that it'll make more sense in a minute. So, but 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:29.520 that's phonology and phonology as far as speech goes, would 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:34.599 be syllables, yeah, sounds, this is like hand like in 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:39.400 a gesture or whatever. Uh. And morphology, which if you're speaking, 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:43.320 that is how words are formed from basic sounds, and 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:46.839 in sign language that's the way you're uh. Hand and 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:51.160 motions represent the concepts. Okay, so that makes sense. Yeah, 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:54.320 and you were saying that American sign language is not 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:59.280 follow English necessarily if it doesn't follow English. In fact, 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:02.719 they try to avoid sounding like English. Yeah, like they 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:07.120 abandoned English syntax. They there's no use of the word 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:12.200 am or be um. It's pretty simple and straightforward. And 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.880 some of the stuff also are some of the signs 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:20.559 are conceptual, like there there are some that are symbolic, 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.839 but some are like a concept or an icon. I 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:27.000 guess it's a better way to put it, like um, 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:30.319 if you are doing dear, if you're saying the word deer, 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:34.600 signing the word deer um er animal, you put your 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:36.880 you stick your fingers up and put them close to 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:40.560 your head, right. Yeah. So I was curious, like how 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:44.800 you would sign the word moose. Yeah, and I looked. 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:48.000 It's the same thing, but rather than having them up 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:50.520 against your head, they're out off to the side a 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:52.800 little bit because the moose has like antlers that are 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:55.280 bigger than a deer. Well, and that illustrates a very 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:58.560 important point with a s l um it's not just 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:01.960 the things the signs you make with your hands, it's 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:06.079 body language expressions, uh. And the space. How you use 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:08.720 the space around you. Like to take the antlers away 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.360 from your head represent something and as we'll learn later, 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:15.160 where you hold your hands represent different things, like further 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.360 away from your body or closer to your body. Um. 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.280 And we'll get to all that, but um, basic nuts 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:24.440 and bolts they are. You can call them speakers even 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:28.320 though they're signing. Uh. But generally you call the person 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:31.839 receiving the sign at the time, the receiver, the person 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:35.320 being spoken to, Yeah, and the receiver. If you're a receiver, 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:38.480 you don't just stare at the hands. In fact, you 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:40.840 don't focus on the hands at all. You focus on 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:44.760 their face and sort of keep the hands in the periphery. 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.320 That's how um. The remember the did you hear about 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:51.440 the guy who was signing at Mandela's memorial? Thought that 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.240 was going to be your intro. Actually I went with 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:56.960 the mistreating people intros to you know, I like that, 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:04.160 Um the Yeah, this guy was a fraudulent UM sign translator. 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:06.600 Now was he really? Did they get? Because I thought 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:11.720 he was like, no, I'm not fraudulent, I'm just he Uh, 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.679 what's unclear is so he was he's he suffers from schizophrenia, 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.160 and UM he was hired on officially to do this 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:21.600 UM and they think that the way he was hired 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:24.960 was because his rate was about half of what an 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:28.199 a normal sign translator that would have been, So they 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:30.840 basically just went with the cheaper option and didn't do 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.840 their due diligence and figure him out because he'd actually 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:38.640 done this before where he doesn't know sign language and 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:41.599 apparently has no malicious intent or anything like that. I 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:43.200 don't know if he just needed money, or if he 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:45.120 thinks he know sign language, or if he wants to 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:47.800 know sign language he feels like he can get it across. 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.440 But during Mandela's funeral, UM he was doing all the 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.400 sign language and it was total nonsense. So none of 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:57.160 it was real at all. No, it was utter gibberish 0:13:57.480 --> 0:13:59.720 and one of the one of the ways that the 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.320 UM the deaf community, who were understandably upset at all this. 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:05.760 I bet some of them got a good laugh, sure, 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:11.320 but overall they said, if you're doing sign you don't 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.000 just sit there with like a stone face, which this 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:16.640 guy was doing. He was all hand gesters, and hand 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:21.120 gesters didn't mean anything. But then also, you express most 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:25.800 of sign language with expressions, with facial expressions. With movement, 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:28.520 you don't just stand there because it doesn't do anything. 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:31.560 You're not getting your point across. So this guy one 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:35.880 of the ways he was found out. Uh, he was 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:38.600 like stone face and if you go and look at it, 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:42.600 he's not moving his face at all, like he's completely solemn. 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.240 He was found out pretty quick too. Yeah, because I'm 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:47.480 sure there are people watching it. You're like, what this 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:52.880 what's going on? This guy's talking gibberish? So weird. Uh, 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:56.480 if you were signing actions a lot of times but 0:14:56.560 --> 0:15:00.600 not always, you just mimic the action like um. Strickling 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:04.880 points out, if you want to sign eat, you hold 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:06.560 your finger and thumb like you're holding like a little 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:08.320 piece of chocolate and you go to put it in 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:13.040 your mouth. That means eat, pretty straightforward. And there There's 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:16.160 also something I think it's kind of neat inefficient about 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:21.320 um sign language. Is that the same that same sign 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:26.240 for eat um is all it doubles for other signs 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:28.720 to depending on what you do with it. Yeah, can 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:32.920 get confusing. It can, but it's also it's it's I 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:35.200 don't know, I like it makes it makes the whole 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:38.040 thing more elegant to me that you one sign, when 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.480 delivered in a certain way, changes the meaning and you 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:44.720 can't you really have to pay attention. Yeah, for instance, uh, 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:46.760 if you want to sign food, it is the same. 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:48.800 A lot of times you will double a sign to 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:53.200 indicate something else to indicate it now, Well, it depends. 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:56.480 That's why it can confusing. So design for food is 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:58.880 the same as doubling the sign for eat. But if 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:01.960 you want to sign eating uh, which is a verb, 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.960 you would uh also repeat the eat signs. So that's 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.240 where if you're receiving sign language, you understand it. It's 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:10.920 all about your context, you know, like, what are you 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:12.800 talking about? Yeah, what do you mean? You guys went 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:17.880 out and you were food? Exactly right. I should teach 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:20.000 you somethings would be fun, um, but I need to 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:25.000 learn it first. But apparently, also the the the verbs 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:31.600 or action words or signs are are bigger, whereas nouns 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:35.600 are smaller. Like the gestures are bigger or smaller, depending 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:37.840 on whether it's a noun or verb. Too, that's true, 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:40.680 that's that's another way. So again, you can't just sit 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:43.400 there with your hands directly in front of you, moving 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:47.160 within a very small box. Yeah, it's your You wouldn't 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:49.600 be speaking at least as far as American sign language goes, 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:52.280 you wouldn't be speaking correctly. That's true. U. There is 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:57.320 an alphabet too, as every thirteen year old girl knows, right, 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:00.600 Why don't you remember that? Like it seems like in 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:02.520 like the seventh grade, every girl I knew went through 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.960 a phase where they learned that the sign alphabet and 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:07.879 would like spell out things with their friends that no 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:09.680 one else knew they were talking about? What you never 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.080 saw that? No? Oh man, I remember the big, bubbly 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:20.440 cursive writing. Yeah. Yeah, I just seem to remember a 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:22.920 lot of young girls learning the sign language alphabet and 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:24.760 they would sit around and spell things about people and 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:27.879 had not run into that, not in Fala. Maybe it 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:31.400 was a Georgia thing. Anyway, there's an alphabet which actually 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:34.880 where you you know, it's called fingerspelling, but it's only 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:41.040 used to um illustrated really specific concept or to indicate 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:43.520 like a person spell a name. Yeah, Like if you're 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:45.800 gonna be telling a story about Josh, are you gotta 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:48.080 do is spell out Josh at the beginning, and then 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:51.280 you don't have to keep doing it over and over right. Um. 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.280 One way to do that too, especially if I'm not present, 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:58.600 is to indicate an empty space by you, Yeah, spell 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:01.400 out my name, point to that empty space, and then 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:03.920 from that point on, anytime you point at the empty space, 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:06.960 you're seeing Josh. Yeah. If you're there, it's called index 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:09.400 and use your finger. You just point to Josh. But yeah, 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:12.160 if you're not there, you just make an imaginary Josh, 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.959 and you keep pointing to that space to refer to Josh. 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:19.200 It's pretty cool. Um. Another reason that you would use 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:23.359 finger spelling would be to ask somebody what a sign 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.800 was for something you couldn't remember. So if you're saying 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:30.600 something you you and you couldn't think of moose, you 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:34.000 might spell out and finger spelling, what's the sign for moose? Yeah, 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:36.600 And then they would say hey, fingers up away from 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:38.800 the head, Yeah, I wrote at wrote I read an 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:43.080 article from the Washington Post earlier about UM Washington d C. 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:47.439 They call him terps interpreters. I hadn't heard. Are you 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:49.800 sure they weren't talking about University of Maryland. They were 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:53.280 talking about you know, but uh, it's a big deal 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:55.480 in d C. There's like on any given day there's 0:18:55.520 --> 0:19:00.200 like fift people in d C signing for clients that yeah, worse. 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:03.200 It makes sense because it's law. First of all, federal 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:07.760 law requires reasonable accommodation for a deaf person. But um, 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:11.399 this one guy that they interviewed, uh, what's his name, Painter, 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.800 He said that spelling is you're you're like your back door, 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:18.480 like if ever, and it's it's tough in DC because 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:24.160 he's like, basically, try signing a speech by Bernanky when 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:28.840 they're saying like very d C specific political jargon that 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:31.520 may you know, maybe not have a concept you can represent, 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:35.639 like fiscal cliff or it's not your first rodeo, or 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:39.040 kick it down the road a little bit. And so 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:43.360 they basically invented political jargon for people to do that. 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:45.280 And he said, or if you get stuck, you can 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:47.119 always just spell it. And that appears to be a 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:52.080 hallmark of sign language, is um there like new signs 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.520 are created all the time, just like a few words 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:57.240 are created all the time. And just like with speech, 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:02.160 um there are prescriptive and there's descriptivists like people who 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:05.800 say no, American sign language is sacrosanct. It is what 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:07.840 it is. It's not to be added to. If you 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.800 add to it, it dilutes the language. Go come up 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:12.560 with your own language if you want to add fiscal 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.040 cliff to it. Um. And then there's other people who 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:18.280 are descriptivists who say no, the language is a living, breathing, 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:21.800 evolving thing, and we need to get the concept of 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:25.880 fiscal cliff along across. So here it is. It looks 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:27.720 like moose kind of. I would just do a little 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:31.080 guy walking then falling off a cliff, sure you know, 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:36.000 and then making a dollar sign. Uh. If you have 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:39.000 seen people do sign language and you see them looking 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.720 upset or puffing their cheeks out or raising their eyebrows, uh, 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:47.639 they're indicating an inflection that what's called a non manual marker. So, 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:52.520 um like, if you wanted to ask someone, and that's 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:55.080 also true punctuation, if you wanted to, you could do 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:58.040 the little question mark sign, but more likely you would 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:01.560 just say the sentence and then raise your eye brows. Right. Well, 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:05.480 give him an example, um like movies, Do you like 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:10.119 the movies? Right? You would say you like movies and 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.560 then raise your eyebrows like, huh. You basically like a 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:18.200 rush and you like movies. That's basically what's going on there. 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:23.200 Any yaka sarf reference is hilarious. It doesn't matter what 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.119 it is. Jever see the King of the Hill that 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:28.560 he co starred on No Way. They go to Branson 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:31.439 and like he uh, I think Bobby like ends up 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:36.080 hanging out with him. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Um. Another 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.280 way you can modify a sign, there's basically a couple 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:42.640 of ways you can modify action. Um. It is by directionalizing. 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:46.280 So if you you know, I had a nice leisurely meal, 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:48.840 you would do the symbols for the signs for eating 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:51.320 very slowly. If you want to tell someone I had 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:52.800 to wolf it down real quick because it was like 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:55.119 for a meeting, you would just do the signs for 0:21:55.160 --> 0:22:00.080 eating very fast. It's pretty easy, yes. Or if you 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:02.960 wanted to say I'm going to give a gift to you, 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:07.520 you would just do the signs for uh, give gift 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:10.720 and then you know, indicate that I'm giving it to 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:13.320 you or to someone else. The direction of it is 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:17.000 going from I to you, So it's implied right there, 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:20.960 give gift is going from I to you, I give 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:23.720 you a gift. It really cuts through all the jibber jabber. 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:25.840 I kind of like it. It really does. And there's 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:29.520 also um rules with syntax are just totally out the 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:33.800 window in relation to English too, it's um. There's something 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:36.840 called the topic of the sentence, and that's frequently a 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:41.160 pronoun like I, and it genuinely doesn't matter where that goes. 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:43.320 You can go at the beginning of a sentence, the 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:48.440 end of the sentence, or both. And I haven't figured 0:22:48.440 --> 0:22:51.560 out where I where both comes from? Why you would 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:55.919 say the pronouns twice? So for example, like UM, I 0:22:55.960 --> 0:23:00.919 am an employee here right, you would just say employee 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:05.400