Aoife Ngo
Staff Writer
This could just be pertinent to Law and BESS undergrads, but so far from all the campus presentations I’ve attended this year I’ve gathered the more you can market yourself as a dynamic, well rounded individual with your priorities in the right place, the more opportunities present themselves (Make those Magic Circle firms fight it out for you, you sparkly PYT!). Option two involves investing every waking hour away in the Ussher in a less than trendy polyester jumper, but getting Schols AND graduating with a Gold Medal Award. Who knew an enthusiastic human being with average grades didn’t cut it for employability anymore? Anyway, after honestly weighing up the options and my actual abilities, I have resigned myself to the well-trodden path of “doing it all or die trying”. With that in mind, I looked through activities I would be happy to spend my time on, and decided learning sign language would kill two birds with one stone.
As of three weeks ago, I started Irish Sign Language (ISL) classes after years of failed New Year’s Resolutions and placing it on the back burner. I always thought I knew enough about sign language (I went through a phase of watching Miracle Worker repeatedly as a child), but I had no real exposure to Deaf Culture. One of the first things I learned from Valerie, my instructor, was that Irish Sign Language involves maintaining eye contact, facial expressions and mouthing words. Pointing at people is perfectly acceptable too. Contrary to popular belief, it is not all about the hand gestures.
I always thought sign language was a universal means of communicating, but as Valerie explained through an interpreter, it isn’t. Most countries have their own sign language, or adopt American Sign Language (ASL). Such fantasies I had nursed of locking eyes with a mysterious dark-haired Chilean across a crowded coffeehouse in bustling Jakarta signing “You have lovely teeth, I am attracted to you” while he signs back that he’d love to get to know me better over some Chocolate Mint ice cream were cruelly, cruelly dashed. According to Valerie, British Sign Language (BSL) is quite different to ISL. This has made me all the more determined to master ISL before moving on to American Sign Language and eventually Chilean Sign Language. I’m giving myself five years.
Anyway, as soon as Valerie starts running us through some signs for “name”, letters of the alphabet, “bus”, “LUAS”, “Meath” and “Dublin”, I find myself really getting into signing. The whole experience works in two ways, breaking the ice between the others in the group and confidently using newly learned vocabulary. I am enjoying it more than I thought I would. I feel the upturned corners of my mouth and my jaw tipped open. My hands were moving awkwardly. I sneak a look at my neighbour. She’s a natural. Guiltily, I look at Valerie again and focus on what she’s mouthing and signing. “Twenty – minutes”. That’s another thing I learned: ISL doesn’t use full sentences. A typical sentence would be, “I have big family, parents alive, have no brothers, have 3 sisters, I oldest.” Funnily enough, I am prompted to think of some of my Malaysian schoolmates speaking in broken English. Like them, ISL doesn’t really incorporate the use of much grammar.
Out of pure nosiness, I asked a few of the others there why they were there. Most of them are health science students with ISL as a module for their courses. I could see the logic of that. But why leave it there? Basic Irish Sign Language should be taught in Transition Year. Perhaps it would be an idea for Transition Year programs across the nation to include mandatory First Aid, ISL, community service, interview skills, personal grooming, and actually covering a third of the Leaving Certificate syllabus. I can only make these suggestions from my wasted time experience, but all I remember from that year was going away to UISCE and spending hours in long Art classes working on lino prints. I didn’t even want to take Art as a subject for the LC.
Another guy apologetically told me he already knew a few signs from his deaf parents and wanted to learn ISL from scratch. However, the best response that I got was “I was always interested in signing. I learned a bit of ASL a few years ago so my friends and I could sign to each other when we’re out: Drink, Bathroom, State of Him/Her, Sit The Next Song Out. It’s quite handy, like.” Genius. I may just do the same.
I would highly recommend learning to sign. If the hour and a half of silence intermittently broken by ripples of laughter doesn’t do the soul good, then the sheer realisation at the wonder of humans communicating extensively via non-verbal means is slightly gratifying. Who knows, one day a Chilean may just sign to you.
