Welcome back! I hope my readers had a wonderful weekend and are staying safe during this time. These past two weeks of ASL have been fun and productive, as usual, J. Reba and I have been able to have a full conversation with little to no use of fingerspelling. We have talked about family dynamics, vocations, past history, homes and etc. This past Tuesday, we spent a fair amount of time learning about time and how to sign months, minutes, hours, years in both a future and past regard as well as being able to indicate numerical value. I believe the hardest part about time right now for me is remembering the difference in signs between the time measurements. Each sign is so similar in shape that I have to considerably think about which sign for which unit of time. I know that with practice, I will become more familiar with the units, but it is frustrating to not have a strong grasp on something so important. I also find it interesting how different languages end up expressing time, especially the months. In English, months are given names- January, February, March, etc. In mandarin, months are described in terms of the numerical value plus the word for moon (月). For example, the word for January would be one month. December would be for twelve months. I soon discovered during this lesson that months, at least in ASL, are expressed through the fingerspelling of the English month, but the word is abridged. For example, January is Jan and December is Dec.
On another note, I was walking outside this past weekend when I bumped into four individuals who were all signing! After I was able to calm myself, I tried to translate what the group members were signing, but they were extremely fast. I was able to understand a few words such as turnover and people, but I could not understand the majority of the story. Although it was a bit disheartening as I have been studying ASL for some time now and still could not translate as much as I would have hoped, I am once again inspired to learn ASL and I am willing to work hard for it. I rarely encounter any deaf people and when I do, I wish I could at least say “hi” and show them in their language that I am an ally. I have been considering what I would like to do after graduation and then I will most likely take a gap year of some sort before P.A. school. However, besides work, I was thinking about what else I could do in my spare time and I have been looking into some ASL interpreter programs! I do not want to have worked on ASL for two semesters (three semesters after graduation) and suddenly drop the language. I would like to continue it!
Also… great news! An ASL original series is coming to Netflix! The series is called Deaf U and will be released in November. From what I have gathered, the series follows several Gallaudet University Students as they go through college. The show is a reality TV show which I have never gotten into, but because of the show’s nature, I am beyond excited for the premier.
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