One of my oldest friends is hard of hearing; it doesn’t tend to get in the way of her daily life, because she’s been developing her lip reading for decades, but the pandemic has presented her with new challenges. She’s in her freshman year of college this semester, and with everybody wearing masks, she’s having trouble understanding their words. She’s always known minimal sign language, but has recently decided to accelerate her studies due to the pandemic. I wanted to try and learn alongside her, which is a large part of why I signed up for this week’s sign language seminar.

The seminar was very helpful. I appreciated having experts in ASL to ask questions, because neither me nor my friend know the fundamentals of the language. I was able to ask a question I’ve been wondering for a while: can you speak English alongside ASL? My friend communicates in English every day, but it’s helpful if we’re speaking quickly in public to show the ASL sign alongside the word. If I’m asking my friend whether she’d like to head to the book store or music store, I can ask that easily through signing book and music in different directions.

As it turns out, ASL has different syntax from English in many cases. As an example, the word for driver is generally expressed by signing drive and person in quick succession — and this differs from English, which can make it difficult to speak fluently in both at the same time. This wasn’t something I’d realized, so I appreciated the answer I got from the seminar! ASL is its own language, with its own grammar rules. So if my friend and I would like to modify it for ourselves, we can, but this wouldn’t be ASL as it’s traditionally used.