Up to this day, I could still hardly explain why I
have started learning sign language.
To a few friends and myself, I said one day I felt
like God told me to do so, which was true – felt
so. But I won’t explain so to most people because I wouldn’t like to sound too
Christian before one has some understandings about myself. That’s why I would
say “one day I wanted to learn something special, so I went to learn sign language”
every time.
Traces could be found from the past. Back to my most
cynical days, for once I really wanted to pretend as a deaf and dumb person
before people like what Holden in The Catcher in the Rye wanted to. In the
story, he finally didn’t, so do I, so far, at least.
Honesty has been an issue for the past two weeks in
this blog, and I’m still in the mood of talking it.
Over the past year and a half, I noticed that deaf
people appeared to be more honest and sincere. Many say that one become more
honest and willing to express and confess when using foreign languages. I
agree, but not for the case of sign language, because it is particularly the
native speakers who made me feel like this is honest.
Sign language is very contextual. Mastering all the vocabularies
and the grammar things are not enough to express fluently.
If facial expressions officially became part of the
signifier, one could hardly lie, because it requires too much acting skills. If
honesty is a characteristic of a language, one could hardly resist not to lie,
because it would be too tiring.
That’s what I find fascinating in learning sign
language.
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