The Movie

Never saw this film before. I have to laugh at mysef, because watching the actors at the beginning and the individual talking about wanting to become an actor, I couldn't figure out why I couldn't quite understand everything they were performing or he was saying. Odd, I thought. Well, maybe they are just so theatrical with their signing. I called over a deaf person to watch the children and the first thing he said was, "Different". Ah you are right, they are signing FLS (French Sign Language), not ASL. However, by the time they got to the young man who was talking about growing up in a all deaf family and wearing hearing aid for the first time and the older man in the group talking about his experience coming to a school for the deaf for the first time and picking up the language quickly, like hearing babies learn to speak their parents' native tongue, I start to to pick it up. "Mother" is sign at the side, instead of the chin in ASL, "signing" is signed similiar to "gesture" in ASL and so forth. But there is no mistaking the gestural way of using sign language, the body language, etc.

Anyway as most students of ASL know, ASL was based on FSL and so is more similiar than say BSL (British Sign Language).

I wonder though, what the little girl was saying to the boy at lunchtime? Hmmm...it didn't look good, looked like a lot of insults were being thrown at someone!

The experiences and camaraderie of the deaf seem to be universal!