hoodoowytch

I went deaf. That's what motivated me to learn ASL and other various forms of Sign Language. I can learn to read various languages fairly easily too, sort of translating them into English in my head as I go. Obviously, some are way easier to learn to read than others.

Hmmm...I too, had never really given it much though as to what is the proper descriptive writing form for writing about furniture. It really doesn't do much other than fill up a room and act as backdrop to the action that may, or may not, be taking place in the room it fills space in.

Well, come to think of it, I've spent hardly any money on specifically learning a language. I tend to use resources like a library and the internet. I read a lot so I spend money on books all the time, but the only language resource one I ever bought, and still own, was specifically on learning to read and write, Ancient Egyptian. I think most of the words and things from other languages I have learned have come from reading, voraciously, fiction and non-fiction...and I am picky about who I read from both sides. LOL Big fan of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Carl Hiaasen, Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of books, and various fiction books as well as non-fiction books ranging from outdoor survival to sewing. We have a pretty good sized library of our own.

Surprisingly, some people find my accent hard to place and I can only suppose because it might have changed a bit since I lost my hearing. I have a very southern accent. I was born in Georgia, just outside of Savannah proper. My mother moved me and my siblings up to Kentucky when I was about 4 years old...so that move didn't exactly "improve" that southern accent in the least. When my hearing went, my speech started to slowly deteriorate because I couldn't really hear myself anymore and maintaining normal decibel levels for speech became extremely difficult. SO, when I got hearing aids, I took some online speech therapy lessons my audiologist lined up for me. Certain that the person who did the "learning to read lips" bit for pronouncing words properly was definitely from the U.K. and probably spoke very proper English. I find it very easy to read lips of people from the U.K...particularly folks from England. This might account for this one doctor asking me where I was from. I told them Georgia...and he was surprised. He said he thought I was from some place in England. I thought that was so funny. I've never been out of the U.S. in my life...although I would love to travel the U.K.

Hmmm...I always thought that making a sort of growling sound with the r was pretty easy as that is what a rolling r sound used to sound like to me before I went all deafie. I used to roll my r's as a kid for the fun of it and it drove my mother nuts. LOL Never occurred to me that it would be something hard for anyone to do. :confused: Glad to hear that you seem to be getting the hang of it too.

Thanks diprod and jfab! I don't know anything about Vimeo, (but I will check it out), and definitely check out the stuff on Youtube. I don't do a lot of youtube because the CC program thingie they use really sucks, but since they have the sign language stuff on there I will check it out.

Those seem to be a bit harder to find. Anyone know of any good resource materials for learning these forms of Sign Language?

Teachers can be brutal like that sometimes. *snigger* I had a teacher that so hated the word "ain't" she would take a wooden ruler and rap whoever said "ain't" on the head rather smartly with it. It stung pretty good too. That was in the 70s. Now it's considered child abuse and we have armed guards in schools across the country. Funny ol' world...ain't it? LOL

Thanks for this link! I think this is going to be a big help for me learning to at least read and write Irish Gaelic better by making it easier to learn the basic grammatical rules of the language a bit easier. it's the spelling that tends to be the hardest part and not know the words and language are arranged for indicating certain ideas. It's a bit different than most other languages I have ever tried to learn.

You mean like Manx? I am not sure how the word, Sengoidelc, is pronounced...but I do like the way it looks. Looks like the name of an Elven language...rather pretty looking word. I am going to have to do some more research into it...I haven't found a lot, at least, not that I can understand anyway. LOL I am wondering if the this David Stifters book would be a good buy? http://www.amazon.com/Sengoidelc-Old-Irish-Beginners-Studies/dp/0815630727

I am learning to read and sign in the Standard Irish Gaelic. I can't hear, for the most part, and so learning to speak the language would prove to be a fair bit trickier. It's extremely difficult for me to hear all the little nuances of pronunciation with a language now. So, I content myself with learning to read and write in them...makes it fun for reading old manuscripts in the language they were written in.

Because I wanted to. I like languages....especially dead ones. I like words... they are important to me. I'm a writer...it's what I do to pay the bills and put food in my belly.

I have so much going on that it's easy for me to get distracted right now, but for me focus isn't too awfully hard. My hubby says I get scary when I get focused and am as single minded as a buzz saw. Block out sound. (Easy for me... I'm a deafie.) Turn off all phones, TVs and shut yourself into a room if you have to. Set aside 1/2 to 1 hour everyday to study and STICK TO IT. Hope this helps.

For the last few years I have often dreamed in sign language. I still hear sound in my dreams, but for whatever reason I have taken to using ASL in my dreams a lot. Maybe it's my way of coping with facing the rest of my life in a silent world? :confused: I have to say, it does make for an interesting difference in the dream-scape.

Flip, flap, flop. Flop, flap, flip. Flipper, flapper, flopper, flopper, flapper, flipper! Annoying, I know.