Why Learn Asl?

Some of you may wonder, why would someone learn ASL? Well, the answer is quite simple. Many people learn ASL in order to communicate with family and friends. Ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents. Statistically, only ten percent of those parents learn ASL. Obviously, there is a huge need for parents with deaf children to learn ASL. It is unimaginable not to be able to communicate with your own child, especially when ASL makes it so easy and beneficial. Additionally, hearing siblings of deaf children need to learn ASL as well. Just make it a family affair, and everyone will benefit from learning, and using ASL. On the other hand, some hearing children are born to deaf parents. And, as you can imagine, these hearing students learn ASL in order to communicate with their parents. Many times, hearing children of deaf parents become interpreters because he or she possesses the knowledge and skills of ASL. Isn’t that sort of stunting to know, that hearing children will learn ASL to communicate with their deaf parents, but hearing parents refuse to learn sign to communicate with their deaf children? Think about it, because it is so true in many cases.

How Do You Learn ASL?

There are numerous ways to learn ASL. You can enroll in an Adult Education class in your community. Or, you can check at a local community college in your area to see if can learn ASL there. You can also learn ASL online. Simply go to a search engine and type in “learn ASL” and see what you find. There are websites that offer themed lessons, an extensive dictionary, video technology for ease of learning, individualized progress chart, and much more. You have to be careful when looking to learn ASL online. There are numerous websites that are not very good, and unfortunately, you would be wasting your time.

What Countries Learn ASL?

There are numerous countries that embrace their people learning ASL. Some of these countries would include Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Japan, and Argentina. However, each of these countries do have their own sign language systems. At times, their sign language systems may not be in a written form, but passed down from generation to generation. Some of the reasons citizens from these countries learn ASL is because of the work of missionaries. Missionaries have helped to spread the need for others to learn ASL. Now, more than ever, countries from all over the world learn ASL, and their own respected sign language system, which often embrace their local signs.

Learn ASL - Myths

There are many myths about the way one would learn ASL. The first myth would be that in order to learn ASL, you must have deaf parents. This myth is false. Anyone can learn ASL because of an interest in the language, or a family member, or friend, may be deaf. Whatever your reason is for wanting to learn ASL, stick with it and learn. The second myth is that people think learning ASL is very easy. The answer to this myth is false. Learning ASL, or any other language, is very difficult. ASL has its own grammatical structure and linguistic principles. In order to learn ASL, it takes a lot of time, patience, and practice. The last myth is that some people think that ASL is just fingerspelled words. This myth is totally false. As you will see when you learn ASL, ASL has its own signs for words. However, you do use fingerspelling when you want to convey the name of a proper noun, or if you don’t know the proper sign for a word, fingerspelling will work.

By: Paul Fugate

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