Deaf Babies Can Babble in Sign Language!

weloveasl:

Teaching sign language to both deaf and hearing babies is a growing trend in North America. It appears that babies who are exposed to sign language are able to also babble in sign language. 

The typical age for hearing babies to start making vocal noises is anywhere from 6-9 months. Researchers believe that this is the time when babies begin to process language by trying to match sound and rhythm to the surrounding language. 

Babies taught sign language do the same, but instead they match action to the surrounding language. 

In a study involving six hearing infants (3 with hearing parents and 3 with deaf parents), researches tried to discover whether or not the baby’s hand movements had any linguistic qualities. 

The 3 children with deaf parents hand movements similar to the rhythm of their parent’s signing whereas the hearing infants’ hand movements had no resemblance to the American Sign Language rhythm. 

Toddlers can have a signing vocabulary of 80 words but understand up to 300. Furthermore, learning sign language is incredibly stimulating, as it has been shown to cause toddlers to create their own new words in sign. 

babbling is a very important part of child development. and the deaf baby exposed to sign language DOES in fact babble in SL.

however it is important to note, deaf babies WILL also babble verbally, between the ages of 6-9 months, its not a replication of language or anything, its simply a physiological response, something that happens. which is why historically many deaf babies in hearing families have such late identified hearing loss because they babbled verbally just like any other hearing baby.

just a cool fun fact in child development.

(Source: babies-and-sign-language.com)

The Opera.

jlennard:

I don’t know whether you guys really do opera in the States.

I’ll assume you know what it is.

Anyway, someone came to me with a puzzle today.

He told me that he’d gone to the opera, and it had been in Italian.

At one side of the stage, away from the production, a woman had been repeating all the lines in sign language.

Presumably so any deaf people coming to the opera could understand it.

But here’s the thing: this being a modern opera house, they had the lines on a screen above the stage in English, so you could watch the show and understand it at the same time.

Which begs the question: if the lines were translated and written as subtitles in English… why on earth did they see it necessary to have the person doing sign language?

If you were deaf, then you could have understood it by reading the subtitles, surely?

Now, perhaps it was for the part of the audience who didn’t speak English and were deaf.

Of which, I’m sure, there were many.

Apparently, sign language in, say, Latvia, is very different from sign language here in the UK.

So our non-English speaking, deaf Latvian still wouldn’t understand it, since it was being done in British sign language.

Now, let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that there was a portion of the audience every night who were British (thus understanding British sign language), deaf (necessitating the use of such a medium), and illiterate (meaning reading the subtitles was not an option).

I hate to say it, and I’m the first to stand up for equality, but doesn’t it seem a little like choosing not to play to your strengths, if, as a deaf and illiterate British person, you decide to go and see an Italian opera?

Of course, this has been taken rather beyond absurdity, but I would be interested to know - does anyone have any solutions as to the need for the woman narrating the entire opera in sign language? Because I sure as hell can’t figure it out.

Non compos mentis.

why do you need a solution to having an interpreter on the stage?

that is providing access to a portion of the population in their native tongue.

also in the US, Operas are transcribed into English regardless of whether there are d/Deaf patrons there or not, because many hearing people dont understand the langauge and they want to follow along as well. 

but in regards to d/Deaf access, having both captions and interpreters provides access for people whatever their native/ preferred communication mode is. 

i dont see what the problem is.

Facundo Element: Privilege

ewitty:

Eyes Wide Open
Aubrecht
May 2012

… “Kind of like the person who decides to wear earplugs for a whole day with the goal of empathizing with groups of people who experience oppression because they don’t hear. You know, underneath that distress and frustration—even the fleeting moments of outrage, there’s still that knowledge that they can take those earplugs out, anytime. And maybe this is what allows people to hang on to the illusion that the problem really does lie in the hearing loss rather than social construct.” … 

[FE: Butterfly Effect]