A question for Rachel
 

I hope you don't mind my asking, and I'm really wondering if someone has asked this before, but I've been curious for a couple of months and I haven't run across an answer yet . . .

How in the world do you get yourself to sign and sing at the same time?

I hope ASLREbecca doesn't mind my quoting her from the Yahoo board, but she said something there that I've been thinking about for a long time.

***Can you speak two languages? IF the answer is yes, then do this right now.
Think in one language, say for example, Spanish, all the while you're doing
this, you MUST speak in English. I'm not saying do this consecutively, I am
saying to do this simultaneously. Find that interpreter you were supposed
to meet in the above paragraph and ask them to sign and talk at the same
time. Trust me, it's not a fun thing to do and it's not as easy as most
people think it is. [. . .] I'm not saying this cannot be done. I am saying it's hard to do. There are
some people that can sing and sign...singing in English and signing in ASL.
Let me just say it takes hours...I DO MEAN HOURS!!! of practice to do one
song this way. Now, I'm only discussing rhythm, fluidity of signs and words
and trying to keep sanity the whole while doing this. I've not even
touched on facial expressions (a big characteristic in ASL conversations).
ASL is more than just knowing vocabulary. Rachel does not have the time to
do this with each and every song, not if she's gonna get us the next series
of videotapes. So now which do you all want a perfectly ASL videotape or
Rachel's Signing Time? " ***Quoted from ASLReBecca



SIGNING TIME, PLEASE! [grins!]

But that post really made me realize how hard it must be to do those songs . . .



Okay, one more quote from ASLReBecca . . .


****"I know my family is unlike any other". In SEE, it would read "I KNOW MY
FAMILY IS (yep, the word is) UN (not sure how SEE does this negation) LIKE
(like as in I like you) ANY OTHER. Nope, Rachel signs MY FAMILY NOT SAME-AS
OTHER ***



Rachel, when you're learning the songs, do you find yourself accidentally singing the words for the signs sometimes?


One more question . . . are you generally pretty good at doing two or three things at once? If I were a betting person, I lay a lot of money to say that you'd be able to rub your belly, pat your head, blow bubbles, play hopscotch, and wink at the same time!

Come to think of it, I think ASLReBecca might be able to do it too!

Thanks, ASLReBecca, for giving me so much to think about!

:)
Jojo

No, I'm not Rachel
 

I once saw a man who was both fluent in Spanish and ASL signing to a deaf person whose written language was Spanish and whose visual language was ASL. It was so hard to watch because I am used to seeing some English words mouthed slightly rather than Spanish words, and it really threw me for a loop. Some people are just so gifted... ;)

Not Rachel
 

Not Rachel--Ha! Actually, I was thinking you or one of the other senior members had probably already asked (maybe at the Yahoo forum, or maybe at Kei's house) and might go ahead and respond to me. :)





Please allow me to wander a little OT my own post for a sec . . .

We have some new neighbors next door . . . they're from Mexico and speak very little English. I don't know how they wound up here in this very rural community of white people. They pretty much just work (at the new Mexican restaurant) and come home right now.

The mother and I talk sometimes, but my Spanish is pretty rusty, so she has to repeat herself often, and there's no telling what I wind up actually saying. :) One sentence I know I said correctly was my question, "Do you feel a little alone here?" and she responded "oh, YES" and her shoulders slumped. Anyway, we were talking yesterday and I found myself signing the word for "MAKE" when I couldn't think of the Spanish word for it. I actually discovered I was signing more than a few words . . . not really on purpose . . . they just popped out while my real self was rummaging around in the dusty parts of my brain looking for the right Spanish word. Isn't that weird?

Anyway, it was an experience that made me think more about how hard it must be to sign one language and sing another . . .

:-)

Still not Rachel...
 

It makes sense to me to sign even if the other person doesn't understand sign. Enough of the signs are iconic so that they might help convey your meaning. My husband is HOH, and even before he took ASL if the dishwasher were running or something else was going on to make it even harder for him to hear me, I would sign to help him understand. Most of the time it helped. :)

I have learned how to sign as much as possible with the ST songs by watching Rachel - and for me, it has become more like choreography than anything else. You know, like singing and dancing at the same time? Maybe it is harder when you are really immersed in the language, and can't separate the movement from the meaning, but for me I just learned what movement went with which English phrase.

Actually not weird at all. Your brain seeks a word in a foreign language, if one language is not forthcoming it substitutes another foreign language word. A very common problem for people who are intermediate or proficient in a foreign language but not fluent, all the foreign languages you speak at the same level will often get a little mixed up. As you get better in one language, it will be less "foreign" to your brain and it will stop substituting in the wrong language.

Actually it is kind of fun. The nice thing about this is that ASL will sometimes help in understanding. Not necessarily true of Russian. :)

I've found this with every language I've learned. First learned French in H.S., then, in Spanish class, filled in the blank automatically with French if I didn't know/forgot the Spanish. Spent part of a summer in Mexico, and the next year in H.S., I switched (French teacher got my random Spanish). Actually, with those 2, it's close enough that it can be useful/handy ;)

So, after torturing my Spanish & French teachers in H.S., when I first went to ASL class, I actually did the same thing *again* :eek: How embarrassing to blurt out something in Spanish (which I became fluent in) to substitute / ask for a sign!! I squashed that pretty quickly. Not super-helpful... I know, as my DH would say, 'What a geek!' :o

Not a geeky thing at all, Chris. I remember taking Russian while in the military. There was a girl that answered an entire vocabulary test in French in our class. She was so upset! then , I got picked on because I spoke Russian with a Spanish accent. There's nothing like hearing your teacher say to you, "I can tell you speak Spanish. Your Russian flows like Spanish." While learning Russian, I remember I used to think of the Spanish word first. Once I finally got passed that, I no longer would have to switch languages in a methodical way.

Just curious!
 

So JoJo,

Have you lent them Signing Time yet to help with the English vocab (and that crazy "gesturing" thing you do when you chat with her)? :p Just curious! I figure if ST! works for adults, and works for kiddos where English is a 2nd language, why not for adults who are trying to absorb English too?

well, I tried
 

over Christmas vacation, and the kids just loved them, but the dad thought I was giving his kids homework to do over the holidays! :-) So they brought them back.

Sadly, there just was not enough friendship for them here and a few weeks later they moved back to Texas. I talked to them a bit, and asked if the wife felt "solamente" (lonely) and you should have seen her face when she said, "si, muy solamente aqui." "VERY lonely here." It just killed me.

I wonder sometimes if Deaf in Arkansas feel like that all the time. There is not much deaf community here--we are so rural. In northcentral Arkansas, there is not much variation in people at all, just all white hearing people everywhere. There might be wonderful Deaf friends just around the corner, but maybe they're so tired of feeling alone and nobody trying to communicate, they stay home.