Noah's Blog

Your mom answered what I was going to say, "home signs" influence. Regional influence, deaf school influence, SEE influence, etc. I recently had a dilemma in my blog for signing "public." I signed, "Hearing" and a certain other (Hi P.) signed, "People" for ‘public.’ Which is right? No matter.

MikeS

Hi very interesting about signs accent in diff state.... my sign for favorite from Minn is right two fingers being put on my right forehead... By the way,, you mentioned you were born in Iowa. ok... I am wondering are you related to Daniel, Terry and Steve Buccholz.... who atteneded to school for the deaf in council bluff,Iowa?????? just curious. have a good day:)KH

Noah - go to my vlog regarding your question, thanks! Copy and paste the link. :-)

http://web.mac.com/darfrazier/iWeb/Darren_Frazier/Blog%20%26%20Vlog/337C3681-8B3E-4BDF-97CE-D8AB2DD2C83C.html

Enjoy! - D.

In CA (SoCal anyway), many people sign 'public' like 'general,' as in "open to the public." Whaddya think?

Hi Noah!

Yes it is interesting, from where I grew up in Colorado, we used a different sign for lucky and then when I moved to East, they signed lucky differently. Just like birthdays too, there are so many different signs for birthdays.

I am not sure why these things crop up, just like hearing people have distinct accents. My mom, hailing from Illinois, has a particular accent. I'm not sure how this evolved, that would be a good analysis and Im sure linquistic people probably have answers to this. I also have evolved in using signs in East because if I used some signs that I learned in Colorado, people wouldnt feel comfortable understanding my strange signs so I have to adapt to fit in.

I was reading in the papers that one woman who was from Denmark, she had a foreign accent and after many years of living in U.S., she was surprised to hear that someone told her that they thought she was from Georgia. She proudly wrote a letter to her family, "finally I am an American citizen" meaning that she finally can speak perfect American English. I thought that was fascinating.

W.F.T., I use that too, "general" sign for 'public.' Either ways.

MikeS/W.F.T./drmzz-
I have a good comment about which sign we should use for the word “public”. I really want to say it in ASL, but my camcorder is in my office. So, I will make a vComment on this tomorrow.

Kathy Hughes-
Yes, Daniel, Steve, and Terry are my second cousins. I’m proud to have Daniel as my godfather and my middle name, Daniel, is named after him. I’m curious how do you know them? Ahh, yes I like that Minn sign too haha. Some signs in Minn are interesting, such as picnic and ice cream.

Darren Frazier-
Thank you for sharing your perspective. In my understanding, American Sign Language is heavily influenced by English, obviously because we are in an English-speaking country. Should we make an effort to eliminate all influences English had on our language, or we just keep those traditional signs? This would be a very very interesting discussion to have! Have you ever watched Carl Schroeder’s vlog on this topic (he points out how we sign “did you hear about it” even though we really can’t hear with our ears)? I tried to find the link to this vlog, but I couldn’t.

Michele-
I agree. I sometime have to change some of my signs, so that some people here in Kansas can understand me. Let me share you a funny story: a woman at my church had been complaining about how my mom, the pastor of my church, sign “favorite” in Iowan accent, getting herself on my mom’s nerve. Seriously, she complained about this non-stop! But… one Sunday morning, in her announcement, she somehow accidentally signed "favorite” in Iowan accent. Thank God, she stops complaining from now on.

There is nothing unusual about these different signs for the same word. It is a well known phenomenon to any bona fide language (so we should be proud of it :-). In the case of ASL, up until recently it has been difficult to communicate long distance so it's quite natural for it to break up into regional dialects. Over time, some signs will be dropped, others favored, new ones introduced. And given the greater communication now available via VP, vlogs, computers, etc, I think this process will speed up.

Think of how the spoken English in Britain is different than that of English in the US. Many words are different such as boot and bonnet for trunk and hood (of a car), stockings vs nylons, jumper versus sweater.

In regards to the question regarding "english" influence, well no language is "pure" -- it's impossible. Again: look at English: tomato, chocolate, rodeo, ranch, are all words from other languages.

There was a comment on an earlier entry in this blog that suggested we spell out "prince" or "princess" because the signs came from hearing people. Wow. You want to talk about dragging English back into ASL? Spelling a word out makes it completely English and it looks totally unnatural to me. I would say the natural progression is to add signs/words to a language. And naturalize them to the language, so just like "rodeo" is anglicized (pronounced using English rules of pronunciation, not Spanish which is where the word comes from), move away from spelling it out to a sign...

Anyway, my two cents worth.

I suggest all of you viewers to go to www.deafnewspaper.com. The founder, Ken Davis has video clips every week for one or more signs. It is so interesting to see the people from different states to show how to sign for the words. They do sign different. It is fun to watch!

Catching up on ur vlogs....When I was a child, I remember signing prince and princess the same way for a prince (P from shoulder to hip). As I got older, somehow somewhere, it changed! Now it is done the way your mom says. I guess it was changed to separate the words from having the same sign, maybe?

My reponse to MikeS/W.F.T./drmzz

Hey Noah,

Visit this link: it's my video response to this post and the previous post...

http://s102.photobucket.com/albums/m113/ConradN/?action=view¤t=NoahResponse.flv

Thanks...

My photobucket video doesn't work for some reason, so try here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5252179632357139573

Hi Noah,

Are you related to Noah the Ark ?
Just kidding :) Because I loved to listen to your wonderful lectures about diversal of religions.

Ok, about one of your topics to "How do I sign this ?"

From my experiences, I associate three different states Ohio, Washington, and Florida. I do not see the same sign for doll not even closer but that is fact three states are in USA. All I could do is to learn their different ASL so that way I can social with new group and I still can educate them about different ASL from other states. Here is the link of my vlog regarding signs for *Favorite* and *Doll*.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-i3l8zi74bo

Have a nice evening,

Christopher

Hi Noah,

Additionally, to your information about "How do I sign ?"

Check my videoclip and hope you will enjoy this show.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-i3l8zi74bo

I enjoyed your lecture about diversal of religions. Are you related to Noah the Ark ?
Just kidding....

Have a wonderful evening

Warm Regards,
Christopher Moore The X-ASL Files

Hi!
I'm in So. Cal...surprised to see WFT's claim that people sign, 'general' for public in southern Calif. I tend to suggest tactfully to sign 'general' for public when I see people sign otherwise (sign 'hearing' instead).

:)
Hetty