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malkaI just started an ASL course. It's a continuing education course through my local community college, so although the teacher appears to be good and I'm taking it seriously, it's also not the sort of thing I expect to be hard. They're aiming at the casual student who's picking this up on a whim. (Which, well, I am.)
I just went through the first round of homework, which included a number of "are these the same or are they different?" problems: two signers will sign things, and then you answer whether the things (sentences, abstract shapes, sequences) are the same or different. Very simple, very straight-forward.
Except -- an important part of ASL is facial expressions, even more than in spoken languages. I spent a lot of time staring at one problem, replaying ten seconds of video over and over, and trying to figure out whether the two signers had the same facial expression. They had the same hand movements, but without knowing whether they had the same facial movements, I couldn't tell whether they were signing the same thing or not.
I forgot, until now, that I'm bad at facial expressions. They're not impossible for me, just hard and error-prone. I can read bodies as well as the average person. I can read interpersonal kinesthetics better than the average person. I can read faces probably as well as the 10th or 20th percentile of people.
ASL is going to be a complicated language for me, but not because of the vocabulary or the silence or the position-based grammar (I love what I know of the position-based grammar.) It's going to be complicated because of facial expressions, which will probably give most of my classmates only minimal trouble.
It's a funny old world.
I just went through the first round of homework, which included a number of "are these the same or are they different?" problems: two signers will sign things, and then you answer whether the things (sentences, abstract shapes, sequences) are the same or different. Very simple, very straight-forward.
Except -- an important part of ASL is facial expressions, even more than in spoken languages. I spent a lot of time staring at one problem, replaying ten seconds of video over and over, and trying to figure out whether the two signers had the same facial expression. They had the same hand movements, but without knowing whether they had the same facial movements, I couldn't tell whether they were signing the same thing or not.
I forgot, until now, that I'm bad at facial expressions. They're not impossible for me, just hard and error-prone. I can read bodies as well as the average person. I can read interpersonal kinesthetics better than the average person. I can read faces probably as well as the 10th or 20th percentile of people.
ASL is going to be a complicated language for me, but not because of the vocabulary or the silence or the position-based grammar (I love what I know of the position-based grammar.) It's going to be complicated because of facial expressions, which will probably give most of my classmates only minimal trouble.
It's a funny old world.