#I LOVE YOU SIGN LANGUAGE HOW TO#

Signs in ASL have five distinct elements that give them meaning: Location, Palm Orientation, Hand Shape, Movement, and Non-Manual Markers (essentially facial expressions). In ASL, the middle finger itself still isn’t a word, but it’s not exactly a gesture either. You can’t say “ you, Steve!” You can dress your middle finger up with all kinds of fancy pageantry – pretending to peel a banana, or scratch your eye, or crank a jack-in-the-box, for example – but the meaning is always more or less the same: Fuck you. A gesture is a physical (or verbal) action, like a nod or a head shake or a grunt, that you can’t use as a part of a longer sentence. In English, the middle finger is a gesture, as opposed to a word.

#I LOVE YOU SIGN LANGUAGE HOW TO#

It’s only that, when you’re talking about a language that has spent hundreds of years figuring out how to squeeze the absolute most meaning out of every part of a hand, merely throwing up a middle finger is the linguistic equivalent of showing up to a duel and then firing your pistol straight into the air. Really, though, these people have no idea just how right they are. Whenever I tell someone that I’m studying American Sign Language, there is a nonzero chance that they’ll trot out the same tired joke: “Oh yeah? I know some sign language! ” They laugh, and I laugh, and we promptly stop being friends. The signers in the GIFs below are Ethan Cook and Peter Wujcik, Deaf ASL tutors at Columbia College Chicago. Cory has published two swear-laden books, George Washington is Cash Money and Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes, and runs a Swear of the Month Club which you can subscribe to at: /bettermyths. Now a couple of kids later our family is nice and even, 3 deaf, 3 hearing, 3 girls, 3 boys.This is a guest post by Cory O’Brien ( who is currently studying American Sign Language (ASL) at Columbia College Chicago. A few years later our 4th baby was born and when we found out that she was also deaf it wasn't really a big deal, just normal life in our family. It became a huge blessing for out family and it was amazing to see how fast the kids picked it up. But after a while we started to become more and more comfortable with it, and were able to communicate with our children through ASL. Learning a new language so that you can communicate with your kids is not an easy thing. I had a deaf mentor come to our house weekly, and we began attending an ASL church group. My husband was still in school so he took some classes. We started to learn ASL in any way we could. Not to mention all of the doctors appointments and tests, audiology appointments, and early intervention visits. We had to make decisions about language, hearing aids, cochlear implants, ASL, speech therapy, education options, and all sorts of other things that I knew nothing about.

At first it kind of felt like our lives had been turned upside down. We found out that both my husband and I are carriers of a genetic mutation that can cause progressive hearing loss and each child that we had would have a 25% chance of being deaf. We took him in for testing as well and about a month after Eliza's diagnosis Johnny was all diagnosed with hearing loss but unlike Eliza he was already profoundly deaf. While we were trying to figure out what was going on with her we started to worry about our almost 2 year old son because he wasn't talking yet. Further testing revealed that she had a progressive hearing loss and would most likely eventually lose all of her hearing. She was diagnosed with a moderate hearing loss in both ears. By the time we finally got some answers and a diagnosis we were more relieved to finally know what was going on than anything else. The only problem is she didn't pass a week later, or the next week, or any of the times over the 2 months that we took her in to have her hearing tested.

They told us that lots of babies fail right after birth because of fluid in their ears so we should just come back in a week, retest her, and chances are she would pass. We didn't really know what that meant, they didn't really know what that meant. With my first baby I don't think I even realized that they that they did newborn hearing screenings because he had passed his, I don't think I realized it until the nurse walked in with my newborn baby girl and told me that she hadn't passed. We were so excited to add a baby girl to our family and had no idea how much her birth would change our world. Just over 8 years ago my second baby, first little girl, was born.

I love you sign language