David: Thank you for sharing your story. I was moved by it. Best wishes to you.
Being deaf
61–70 of 161 posts
Re: Being deaf
#62Thank you so much for sharing something so personal. I've had deaf friends in my life from time to time over the last 40 years and I thought I understood (as much as any hearing person can). I was wrong. There is so much more that I hadn't even considered.
Re: Being deaf
#63I've had similar experiences with job interviews as he described. I'm not deaf but am hard of hearing (severe enough that cocheular implants have been recommended) and interviewers consistently require over the phone interviews with no alternatives. Requests to Skype or use gtalk get ignored or shunned upon (I even had one recruiter state they couldn't do this because then there would be no way to verify I am the one answering the questions). HR really needs to get withthe program.
Re: Being deaf
#64Thank you for the wonderful post, David. Perfect for us hackers. In our world, but not completely. With a human touch we often gloss over. And with plenty of fresh data.
Now here's what to do: Have business cards printed up with 2 links (and nothing else) on them, one to your blog post and one to this discussion thread. Then hand them out as you see fit. The people you meet in real life deserve to know this just as much as we have. I hope that helps.
Best wishes and no matter what else life throws at you, keep building!
Re: Being deaf
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won't pretend to know about literacy rates among deaf people, but I want to underline jacobr's point here: ASL is not "English with hands" any more than spoken Japanese is "English with different sounds". It's a different language, with different grammar, and different rules. Don't let the "American" throw you off. They may use familiar words and letters when writing, but you can say the same about many European la…
Sign languages are proper languages of their own, and even if they are invented by hearing people, when a deaf community adopts the language it usually diverges quickly from the hearing culture language. So, you're right that there was a precedent to ASL that came from France but don't assume that ASL is much like French.
English came from French (& German).
(For relaxed definitions of 'French' and 'German')
Re: Being deaf
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
You won't get exposed to language nearly as much as a hearing person. Also, sign languages don't use regular English words, so your vocabulary will not be expanded that much in conversations.
I won't pretend to know about literacy rates among deaf people, but I want to underline jacobr's point here: ASL is not "English with hands" any more than spoken Japanese is "English with different sounds". It's a different language, with different grammar, and different rules. Don't let the "American" throw you off. They may use familiar words and letters when writing, but you can say the same about many European la…
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Re: Being deaf
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a person who was raised with two different household languages at different times, I can offer anecdotal evidence that this holds true. My refugee parents decided that their native language (Romanian) would be an obstacle for me in their new country (Thailand) and went for English instead. Then we got asylum in Sweden and I learned Swedish in kindergarten and so on. In Sweden my parents started speaking Romanian a…
So you learned English from TV? I thought I've always heard that didn't work.
I learned most of my early english from TV. I grew up in the Netherlands, speaking Frisian at home and Dutch at school. At the time dutch tv did not offer much programming aimed at children, the more interesting cartoons to be found on cable tv were on english language channels. I would tape Transformers episodes and watch them over and over.
Later on I started consuming other media (video games + video game magazines, american comics), so that by the time they started teaching english to me at school I was already relatively fluent.
Re: Being deaf
#68I could try to find a deaf girl. However, I don’t want my kids to have an increased chance of deafness. This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation. Cross that bridge when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids were fine. Even if they come out hearing, we’d need to make sure they’re raised right — who will teach them how to talk? Let me respectfully suggest that this is…
This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation. Cross that bridge when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids were fine. Actually, you're right. Sometimes the girl I like is deaf, sometimes not. I should be fine with kids either way, and put in the work to make sure they develop right. I'm rethinking this entire paragraph. Perhaps I should have said I don't specifically sea…
First, non of what I'll be writting is an offense of any kind, I'm just putting it first because a) my other language isn't english 2) it's a sesitive subject and 3) it's awritten communication - annonymous.
You are right, love is love. And one thing I learned, never argue with it! Never! So secondly, I don't think there is anything wrong with premature optimisation, everybody wants their kids to be allright and, yes, normal. If they are not, you still love them and you can't predict it anyhow but I completely understand if you want to reduce risks. since I was faced with a similar decision myself (thank god my genes turned out ok), my girl-friend and I decided to go for it. Exactly because we wanted our kids to be allright.
And as for the rest of your post: you opened my eyes on a subject I never really thought about, thank you very much for that!
Re: Being deaf
#69I read your post with extreme interest and came to a better understanding about being deaf. Thank you for that.
I have a few questions. Can you sign? Can you read lips? Can you pronounce words? The reason I ask is I once had a deaf friend. He didn't sign, or at least didn't try to with people that didn't know ASL, but he could read lips. He could read lips so well that he could tell if you were just mouthing a word or actually saying it out loud. He would often admonish us if we simply mouthed a word to him. :) It got to the point where the only impediment to ongoing conversations with him, was that he had to be looking at you. He was so good at reading lips that he would often pickup parts of conversations he wasn't a part of ( like "overhearing" one ). If he wanted to know what was going on, he simply had to look in people's direction and read their lips.
It was awkward for the first day or two. Him looking right at you, you getting over mouthing words to him, him replying to you in the tone that only a person who can't hear their own words would. To me, it was no different than learning to speak with a foreigner but the added benefit was that we seemed to pick it up after no more than a week of solid talking, laughing, mocking, and understanding. I seem to recall him telling me to shutup on more than one occasion. Coming out of his mouth, it sounded more like "shauuuuup" with no real emphasis on the T or the P, but I knew what he meant.
I don't profess to know whether or not he's gone through the same loneliness as you, but it seems that he found a way to be a part of "normal" that worked for him and for the people around him. Does this mean I wouldn't have learned sign language? No. This also wasn't a work environment and it predates any technological "advancements" that may be at your disposal now.
Re: Being deaf
#70I could try to find a deaf girl. However, I don’t want my kids to have an increased chance of deafness. This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation. Cross that bridge when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids were fine. Even if they come out hearing, we’d need to make sure they’re raised right — who will teach them how to talk? Let me respectfully suggest that this is…
This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation. Cross that bridge when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids were fine. Actually, you're right. Sometimes the girl I like is deaf, sometimes not. I should be fine with kids either way, and put in the work to make sure they develop right. I'm rethinking this entire paragraph. Perhaps I should have said I don't specifically sea…
Yeah I think you could remove that section entirely.