General Chat

At my gchildrens old school all the children learned sign from nursery up then there school was amalgmated with another one the new school stop doing it Val

Diana Twins are learning the basics. Their TA is deaf in one ear and is doing a signing course, she in turn is passing it on to the kids. She says the really enjoy learning it, and i know my boys come home keen to tell me what words they have learnt!!!

I love this!! So many children who in future will be able to get by with deaf people!! Its fantastic!! Jay - i have faxed the place we looked at and finger's crossed!! x

Diana lol at pc but you have a bit of an advantage over me its years since i did sign but now the daughter tries to practice on on me and hands up she does things with a word that i would have to spelt out, but is this a young persons slang ehhhh its like mobile txt abbreviations for the deaf, is this a young persons thing coz i am lost, example ' good morning' bears no resemblance to what i know, but during easter she is coming for a girly sleep over so that will be fun as kerry has told her i showed her how to sign. Getting ready for a panic attack lol. Oh my pals dad was a bit of a celeb he was the (at the time the only deaf and dumb pro wrestler in the uk) late 60s early 70s Steve

Oh trust me steve I still get it wrong hence doing the BSL course now!! Daddy used to laugh at the new signs!! xx

Sweetie i may need help easter week i think they are useing short cut sign as a peeeeeee take to us older gen lol, if you get a panick pm help please. But do you think the deaf kids are now making short cut sign just like using a mobile phone text message, or am i just old??? Steve

They use a lot of slang which we were never taught and finger spelling may be cut short but the signs won't have changed that much - although saying that some are drastic.... to me SORRY is your knuckles across the side of your head but now its knuckles rotating on your chest!! Very strange to me but hey at least its a REAL LANGUAGE now!! xx

Since we have moved into telling our stories of sign, I thought I would add mine: I started signing properly when I was about 11. I was part of a Youth Group that focused on First Aid (Red Cross Youth) and a lady that ran a youth group for children with hearing difficulties and their siblings contacted us. This lady asked if we would be able to help here as some of the children in the group wanted to learn First Aid but they did not feel able to come to our group because of the language barrier. I know some arrangement was reached which resulted in this lady coming to our group to teach us BSL. This lady was a wonderful teacher and we soon learnt more than we could have imagined, we started with numbers and the alphabet and soon progressed to all sorts of things. As Christmas approached, we decided to invite the children of this lady's youth group to a Christmas party. This Lady spent weeks teaching us 'we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year' and 'Old MacDonald had a farm', we had fun learning and we ended up gaining 2 new members because of it. One of these new members was a young death girl that lip read and could speak a little and the other was a girl from my school whose brother was death (he was born without ears and had to wear heavy boxy hearing aids at the time). Unfortunately, many of the younger children lost interest and started to stay away from the group or played up during the sign session that the Lady that taught us left. Move on 5 years to 6th form, and another lady contacted my school asking if any of us would be interested in doing sigh and offered to come in during our lunch hour, as she needed to do more hours of teaching practice to be able to complete a course allowing her to teach sign. Our Group began with about 25 girls but quickly dwindled to around 12 of us going regularly. Eventually, we shrank again to 8 and we were told that if anyone else dropped out the group would have to close as it was unworkable, we did lose more people and the group closed. I still have all my notes from this and used to practice with my friend but she would tell me off for being too quick for her and constantly signing basic things. Progressing another 2 or 3 years and I had a summer job at a play scheme ran jointly by our local council and MENCAP. During my time at the play scheme, we looked after a boy that communicated in BSL and his brother who spook makaton (both deaf). The boy that used BSL we allocated to my on 2 occasions, and I found that he responded the same if you signed as he would if you spook to him, however I still did both as I thought it would give him the choice – I never saw either boy sign, although both made themselves clearly understood. I've noticed changes in sign over the years too, when I was 11 we were taught that the sign for people was 'man woman' but later it became a vertical squiggle. Strange as it seems to most people, I list sign amounst languages I speek making a note that I am far from fluent and have only a basic understanding.

Yep That what i am about to learn, most of mine was finger sign, that and a few other hand signs, and still am so is my son, but then my girl (13) has totay blown all i know out of the water. Tho she is a sweet girl and knows my finger sign i may need help lol, so dont run away easter week please. coz the two of em may take the you know what lol Steve