subject: Sign Language [print this page] Sign Language Sign Language
Sign Language is a system of communicating with the deaf that involves using the hands and face to gesture and gesticulate to speak.
In sign language, you can count, spell and speak words just as in spoken language all using the power of non-verbal communication.
Each country or culture has its own sign language. The sign language system that is used and taught in the United States of America is American Sign Language or ASL for short.
A speaker of American Sign Language wouldn't be able to understand a speaker of French Sign Language, just as a speaker of English who speaks no French would not be able to communicate with a Frenchman.
Most people who embark upon learning sign language do so because they have a deaf relative or loved one with whom they wish to be able to communicate with the kind of fluidity that spoken words offer.
Another reason why many individuals undertake sign language learning is because it is a growing field and can become a promising career.
Deaf education is a very popular major among college students and it gives the students a chance to communicate with deaf people where most people can only speak to them but not understand them as well.
Most people think that learning another language is super difficult. It's not our fault that we believe that because if we think back on the way that foreign languages are taught in our schools, it all makes sense. Instead of language learning being an amazing, immersive, emotionally rich experience, we're stuffed into classrooms where we're forced to learn vocabulary and grammar and then get graded on it! There's truly no subsitute for simply SPEAKING a language and connecting with the people who speak it as well.
Luckily, learning sign language is substantially easier than learning a spoken language. Perhaps this is because it doesn't require learning new sounds and shapes of the mouth, but instead requires learning how to string together body language expressions that we all use subconsciously throughout our lives as a punctuation to speech.
An interesting side effect of learning sign language is that peoples' gestures may become confusing. While the gestures may make perfect sense in concert with words, they look like gibberish or unrelated sentences to the signer.
Learning sign language, American sign language in particular is super easy and can be done from the comfort of your own home using language learning software such as the Rocket Language course Rocket Sign Language
