Oh yay, that's great!!!

I'm glad you like talking about your experience here, because it's super fascinating to learn about it for me :)

The last time I met a deaf person was probably in elementary school, where we had kind of a field trip to a school for the deaf that was in our city to learn a bit about sign language and probably also to raise awareness for disabled people in general in us, since we were still super young. So I don't really know anything about deaf culture at all.

The deaf day sounds really weird to me :/
I guess it's kind of difficult to have a class that is mostly attended by people with hearing and not mess up at some things. But translating lyrics really seems like an obviously ill-fitting task. Why not do some fun stories instead or something, not something very much tied to the experience of hearing?

Disclaimer: I am late deafened, and not culturally Deaf. Culturally Deaf people do not typically see themselves as disabled.

Really, with music, the opinion varies. I’d say it depends on respect—how close to a thoughtful translation the ASL was. I’ve seen great videos of signed songs, then some that are clearly for the novelty factor. It’s a blurry line between sharing the culture/spreading awareness and cultural appropriation.

The comic didn’t exist when I was in school and seems defunct now, but thatdeafguy is a fun way of learning about the deaf experience. It has accurate depictions of signs. “A Silent Voice” (movie/manga) is supposedly good as well.

Deaf Day still makes me a little angry. It doesn’t fully simulate being deaf because it’s easy to cheat at it, and it minimizes the severity of being deaf because it’s like, “oh, hearing is a thing you can turn on and off.” Well intentioned, but misses the mark.

Hm, I guess if one has never experienced hearing or grown up mostly without it, it makes sense that it wouldn't necessarily appear to be a disability. Although there probably still are some difficulties where society just isn't aware that not all people can hear, I would guess?

That comic is super fun! I just googled it an had some trouble to stop clicking next and write this reply ;) I love the kid :D

There is a whole HISTORY of problems between deaf people and those who profess to help them.

Sign language was discouraged for years. The fight eventually morphed into “how English should ASL be?” I don’t know other countries’ histories, but I imagine they’re similar.

Speech was the goal for years. It was terrible.

I love that comic so much! It’s fascinating.

That sounds super bad. I have no idea what the history of that is here.
What do you mean by "how english"? Isn't sign language pretty much independent of what written language one uses? I mean, apart from there being different sign languages in different parts of the world as well.

I read all the rest of the comic strips yesterday. Now I'm sad that there isn't more :D

ASL was not considered a language in its own right until the 1960s. Even after, it was a fight. Educators and speech language pathologists advocated for differing degrees of signed English (exactly what it sounds like—signs in English word order). I think since the 90s, maybe, we’ve finally arrived at bilingual-bicultural, where both ASL and English are taught.

The problem was language acquisition. Hearing babies do so much incidental learning, which deaf people just...miss out on. It really is teaching language to someone with no idea what language is.

I miss my hearing so much, but I am so glad I had language first.

I see. Somehow I would expect trying to sign a language that developed for the spoken word must be terribly clunky. But I have to admit, I don't even know how based in german the sign language that is used here is either.

How does one teach deaf babies/kids to sign? Do you teach the parents as early as possible so that they can sign to their babies in place of talking to them and they might pick it up naturally like hearing babies do with language? But then you have to figure out that the baby can't hear pretty early, when it might not be super easy to tell? And the parents must learn quickly...
And I suppose they then have to learn a completely different language at some point when they learn to write. That seems tough!

I'm glad there's something good about the way your personal story went for you and it's not like "I wish I never knew what hearing is like so I wouldn't miss it".

I’ll admit I don’t know the linguistic development well, but the usage went through shifts.

Well, now, in the US, I believe babies or young children have to be tested for hearing. The goal is early intervention, with sign language supplemented by hearing aids, if they work. However, there are still areas and people who do not like or want to use ASL, and it gets messy.

A stat I was taught was most deaf-from-birth adults read at an eighth-grade level. It might be getting better, as educators understand more now, but it’s sobering.

It was a shock in the beginning, but I’m mostly over the loss. c: Waiting to become deaf was the worst part.

Having people who know sign language in early childcare professions sounds like a super good idea :) They might be able to teach the kids more things than the parents who might just be starting to learn the language themselves.
People not wanting to use ASL to communicate with their kids sounds stupid to me -.- just be happy that there is a way that works and not puts all the burden of adapting on the deaf kid.

It must be tough to learn reading without knowing the language first... So it doesn't seem all that surprising that reading levels of deaf-from-birth aren't the best when you think about it, but yeah... sobering is a good word for it.
Especially if you consider that the written word might be considered by somebody with hearing the most natural way to try to communicate with a deaf person if you don't know sign language yourself. At least that's what I would attempt first - just have a little notepad and write instead of talking. I hadn't really considered that reading and writing might be more difficult for a deaf person as well before this discussion.