Monday, September 10, 2018
Did someone sign Willie Nelson?
My ASL teacher has given the class homework - learn ten signs and teach them to the class. I have no idea where to begin, but being the diligent student that I am I decided to reach back to my Frederick roots - home of both Patsy Cline and the Maryland School For The Deaf, so here it is - a mash up of bad signing and great song writing:
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13 comments:
Patsy Cline had the sweetest voice on earth. She could wear the compliment paid by Dick Dawson to Beverly Sills, "I thought all the angels were in Heaven until I heard you sing".
Willie Nelson shouldn't even be mentioned on the same planet as her.
Except that he wrote some of her hit songs.
I think you're putting us on. You're not taking a class.
But in case on the slim chance you're being sincere here are ten useful words to show them.
* show up
* escape
* everyone's talking, gossip
* attack
* arrest
* yell
* line of cars
* helicopter
* Russian
* Chinese
* Japan
Heck, how about some more?
* Canada
* Mexico
* England
* Germany
* Africa
* embarrass
* in front of
* entire
* class
Soph drives me crazy sometimes.
I just now checked two online dictionaries and discovered for fifty years I've been saying the word "try" wrongly with two "t" hand shapes, and no one ever corrected me. The same thing as Soph does but without the "t" shapes. And I'm thinking, Soph, were are your two "ts" ? Huh? That's how much English is built into my signs. (I learned during a period when Seeing Essential English was making fairly strong headway, and now all those little bits are built into my handwriting and otallytay uckingfay me up.
But this is so very odd.
I just now, just this minute, finished purging my Amazon music of hundreds of files. And it bummed me out because it's such a wearisome task. One-by-one. I did bring into it Crazy by Patsy Cline but that was only one song, not an album, but I had dozens of Patsy Cline songs all throughout the whole account. Amazon is stuffing my account with songs I don't want. It took a full hour to get rid of them all. Eventually I just got ruthless and took out every title I didn't recognize without listening to the intro. Dozens of Patsy Cline songs included, now excluded. R.E.M., U.2., Dog Bones Something, Madonna, Bulldog all over the place, hundreds of the fucking Beatles and Harrison. I never invited any of that. I never brought over any Johnny Cash, but there he was all throughout my list of songs. Depeche Mode songs I never even heard of. Crap all over the place. If this happens again, I'll swear to Jesus who's sitting right here, I'll close that account.
Jesus just now shrugged and said that's fine with him.
See - right now I am signing "cow" - wiggles "Y" sign, palm out, next to right temple. Naturally I asked "How do you sign "bull", which I parenthetically added (that's only half a word in my vocabulary) and got "Y pointing to my forehead", little finger and thumb wiggling.
Thanks, Chip, and you are correct, ASL is moving away from trying to teach English through signing. ASL FTW is what they are signing.
Sixty Grit said...
Except that he wrote some of her hit songs
Just 1 doesn't matter.
A failed blues singer who just remarketed his stuff and sang through his sinuses.;
Is that Patsy Cline doing the signing? Well, whoever she is she has a nice face. Anyway, my question is, do the deaf feel the beat of a song, the rhythm? I sure hope so.
Patsy Cline died in a plane crash in 1963, so no, that's not her. She is doing the singing, not the signing.
As for deaf people feeling the beat - with some music it is unavoidable. I think it requires a certain amount of volume or percussiveness for that to happen, that is to say, chamber music is probably lost to most of them.
Cow horns don't wiggle.
Look up the word for "bullshit." That's a good one.
You know there's a hurricane coming when you see politicians speaking seriously in cliches and someone signing what they're droning on about. I imagine a survivalist like Sixty is well supplied, hope windbag is as well.
This is so hard. Whom do I believe when it comes to cow horns? ChipA the ASL King of the Patch or Sixty Grit, the Horn Wiggling and Red Flagged Eager Learner?
To see for myself, I went to Swearing in Sign Language with Stephen and Alex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-8SMFd1lgQ
Go Sixty. May you be that happy and confident as you take on this new form of communication!
Thanks, MamaM, and that link illustrates a conundrum that I face as a left-handed person in a right-handed world - Stephen and Alex sign that in mirror image to each other. I guess handedness shouldn't be a problem but what do I know?
Here is what was taught for "cow", which raises the larger question, whom do you believe? Which sign is correct? What if you sign with an accent? I'll get back to you once I know the answers.
Didn't know Sixty was a southpaw. Explains a lot.
Sixty, I'm jelly. What fun. I should start with essential words and phrases, like fire!, where is the restroom.
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