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