Which is too bad, sign language would be useful in later life. Unless there is a deaf person in the babies life though they will refuse to have anything to do with it once they can speak.
The way my friends have done this is to speak and sign, not just sign. I don't think any of them would've thought it was appropriate to only sign to a hearing child. The purpose was to teach them both the verbal language and a way to communicate back while they were still too young to verbalize (or, in one critical case, unable to speak due to a birth defect but were perfectly capable of hearing).
Babies do tend to learn a few signs...However as soon as they learn to talk they universally forget everything.
A ridiculous assertion.
My son knows quite a few signs and often uses them alongside speaking, which can really help when he's struggling to be as clear (e.g. when he's frustrated).
Her vocabulary is small (she's a dog), but we have gestures for e.g. "sit", "lie down", "stand back up", "stay", "come here", "go there", "be quiet", "show me what the problem is".
(She's a Siberian Husky)
My dog intuitively knows just about anything I could want her to do. She follows me (or my SO if they're home) rendering commands like "come" irrelevant. If I put on pants during the day, she idles back and forth between where I am getting ready and her kennel, finally opening the door herself when I'm ready to leave, then I latch the gate.
She has a pretty consistent schedule so most of the time, when we're doing something, she knows exactly what her role is. Another great example is treats. For the longest time we only made her sit to get treats, so now she basically does that. A few months ago, I wanted her to learn lie down but I paired it with sit first. So now if she hears the treat bag, she'll come over to me, wait for me to say one word, then she sits, then waits for another word, and then she lays down. However those words are meaningless to her. If I say, "Lay down" first, she sits. You get the idea!
That said, she's a great pup and very well behaved. :)
I think the biggest issue is that most languages including ASL have about the same informational density for a given unit of time. Whereas Cued Speech and Signed English have significantly lower informational density.
If you're a teacher or a police officer or someone who needs to talk to all people, including deaf people, wouldn't learning the eight cues be a useful tool, even if you're not going to fully-learn ASL?
Of course I can't claim any ability in ASL. When taking the baby sign language classes my teacher was very insistent that to the baby what sign you use doesn't matter, but we should use ASL signs because learning any other sign isn't any easier, and this way we have a few dozen signs that are actually useful after the baby grows up. Which is the point: if you learn some signs of ASL you can communicate better than pointing. When you learn something else your are just pointing and hoping you are understood.
So if you're saying "mat" "bat" or "pat" those all look the same to a lip-reader. With the cues, you have a small gesture that is distinct for /m/ /p/ /b/.
They combine together to make a total of about a dozen gestures that can be used to differentiate between any hard-to-understand English word.
So it's not a phrase book. It just allows you to say anything you want to say and be understood a little more clearly by a lip-reader.
The value proposition of CS is language accessibility to Deaf/HoH people while still using English.
ASL, which comes with its own body of literature, puns, jokes, culture, etc., wasn't designed in the sense that Cued Speech was, but offers something much more valuable, in my opinion.
"I love you", "Food?", "Tea?" (we're tea drinkers) are commonly used in my home.
Sign Language -> communicate with someone in a noisy room (across the room even)
Braille -> A friend of mine learned braille so he could "read" books after his parents said lights out. What a rebel.
I went to a high school where the drama department did at least one play a year in ASL. Brought in instructors from the local deaf community, and all the drama kids learned it.
This was also business genius, because it basically guaranteed ticket sales. A huge number of deaf people in the area would show up for every such play, year after year. Even parents with kids at the school generally stop coming to plays after their kids graduate, but this audience was loyal on the scale of decades.
It also meant that a significant chunk of the student body was now able to communicate in/across a noisy room. During assemblies and stuff, you'd see a dozen conversations in progress, not making a sound.
Or, communicate near-silently. Clothes rustle and certain signs involve patting, but neither of those sticks out the way voices do. Coordinating a prank behind the teacher's back....
Braille is just a writing system. Signed languages are generally not.
Noisy places, when I’m brushing my teeth, when I want to be more discrete in public, communicating across a room without yelling.
when I want to be more discrete in public ..
Which would have been handy at one point for me.
Like generally in public? Or when you're in a social group with others?
For the first scenario, I'd almost always speak a second language if I could, for privacy reasons. And also because it's less distracting to others IMO - people tune out unfamiliar languages as noise but not conversations they can understand. But yeah it's rude in the second scenario.
It is less of a big deal than when you're in a social group, where someone could feel that you are deliberately excluding them.
You can learn from YouTube, a sign dictionary (online ones have video) ... but yes, conversation is probably the best way.
A night class or MOOC?
Seriously, they haven't even tried to come up with a better system. Like.... pictures on the glass that you can point to? A form with checkboxes that you can hand over? Nope, we're going stick with yelling our lungs out.
Sign language is a real language you can learn the language. Or you can learn a few signs: there is a place for both, but know which place you are in and don't pretend more.
Did you ever get an actual answer? I'd guess yes, but it's a fair question
Another example, the notion that monkeys can "learn sign language". They can learn to use some signs, like a newborn can learn some words, but how would you feel as a French speaker if someone said "look, the monkey speaks French!" just because they taught the monkey some French words? It implies not that the monkey is smart, but that French is so simplistic that even monkeys can understand it.
My wife is learning Spanish right now because we are moving to Costa Rica. Her most used phrase is “de espacio, por favor” which means “slowly, please”. She’s able to understand much more of the language when folks slow down and annunciate clearly.
When I lived in Chile as a teen, I also asked people to do the same thing frequently until I became proficient. I still ask sometimes in other Spanish-speaking countries because their accent or dialect differs from what my ears are most used to.
Speaking slowly and clearly to anyone learning a language is incredibly useful and is not insulting in any way.
If I spoke to you in Klingon, and you don't understand Klingon. Would speaking to you in Klingon slower and louder help you? Undoubtedly, no, it would instead make me a rude person.
It's the same phenomenon as within language families. I don't know Ukrainian, but I can pick up words that share etymology with Polish words, assuming they speak slowly enough for me to isolate individual words. Similarly, I don't know much German, but I can route individual words through English.
These films (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French and German) all clearly had posters at the theaters saying they were sub-titles and yet there was always someone demanding the movie be in English.
Also I think a number of people have poor/slow reading skills that they can't bluff about when someone uses signing.
You doubtless already use many signs. They may not be ASL but we do use a variety of hand gestures to convey very specific meanings.
We, the hearing community in my country (UK), use gestures too of course.
Could you give a few examples of signs hearing people use where you are that you consider "very specific"?
Flipping the bird. Pointing at things. Hand signals when driving (more a thing for motorcyclists). Then there are plenty of job-specific things. Crane operators have their own system of very specific hand gestures for directing crane operations. The military has a host of standardized gestures. DJs/audio techs/musicians have a set for talking in loud environments.
https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/safety_haz/materials_handlin...
https://armynavyoutdoors.com/blog/learn-military-hand-signal...
The little girl in this vid managed to convey a very specific meaning to a passing ship using only a gesture.
And it's SO specific that just reading that sentence, I knew exactly which meaning you meant, and which gesture. (Clicking the link to confirm was totally worth it though.) I've been on both ends of that gesture and it's always a hoot.
> DJs/audio techs/musicians have a set for talking in loud environments.
Whoah, really? I've improvised plenty, but I'm super curious if there's a standard set. You can always figure out "make louder", "make quieter", point at objects, mimic certain instruments. But it'd be nice to have more vocabulary beyond that.
http://www.preservationsound.com/2010/09/microphone-hand-sig...
https://www.cybercollege.com/hand_sigs.htm
And any orchestra can follow a conductor, baton or not.
Also re-reading this thread, I thought of the hand signals that every driver must learn in case their electrical turn signals go out, which are the same as bicyclist signals. Specific to the point of being enshrined in law.
I don't think "flipping the bird" is specific, it's either "I'm a jerk" or "I'm angry [with you]" but they both seem pretty wide ranging.
Pointing is really none specific, do you want it, want to look at it, want someone else to hold it, etc..
Military and crane operator signs seem like they're limited sign languages. Excellent example.
Driving is a good one, but it's 3 specific signs, and then pointing. I'm often annoyed that other drivers don't know BSL!
Thanks for illustrating the point, very helpful.