So yeah, I'm learning sign language. For the past few nights, I've been getting myself to sleep by watching sign language videos, and in particular these guys, who are especially easy to follow. But on Tuesday I had my first proper lesson.
I've been interested in learning sign language for a few years now, but never actually got around to starting. I have a little book of all the activities in the Nagahama community centres, and looked in there but there were no sign language classes; but since I was in there to play go on Tuesday, I asked at the desk if they actually did have any, and they told me that yes, there was one that evening, and should they tell the leader that I'd be there? Swept along by the flow a little I said yes, and later that night I was part of a sign language circle at the local Social Services center.
There were seven of us in the group altogether, six hearing people and one partially deaf. There was supposed to be an instructor for the group, but apparently she hadn't been turning up for the past few weeks, so the partially-deaf guy lead the group. Everyone had a workbook, and we took it in turns to try signing Japanese sentences from the book. He also took us through a couple of vocabulary lists.
I actually found it quite easy to pick up the signs, and was able to get almost all of the vocabulary right when they tested me on it afterwards. I'm not sure I'd be able to remember it all now though.
The one important thing about sign language is that it is not an international language - we are learning Japanese sign language which is distinct from English sign language, which is distinct from American sign language, and so on. In fact, there are regional dialects of JSL, just like there are any other language. But the other thing about sign language is that it is not simply a translation of the "host" country's language. Japanese sign language is hugely influenced by Japanese, and the grammar follows Japanese word order, but it's not Japanese. During the lesson I found myself trying to translate word for word between Japanese and JSL, but word-for-word translation is a bad way of thinking about any foreign language, sign language included.
For instance, JSL has four signs for "to eat", as opposed to Japanese's one word, dependent on what it is you're eating. There are two different signs for "year", depending on whether you're talking about a point in time or the passage of time. In Japanese, you would take "year" and then slap "+duration" on the end of it, but in JSL it's a different sign. Similarly, one of the sentences that someone had to sign was "Where shall we have the meeting?":
Japanese: 会議はどこにしましょうか？
Gloss: meeting +TOPIC where we-shall-do +QUESTION
They were told off for trying to literally sign "we-shall-do". Instead, the signs should be:
Gloss: meeting what place decide +QUESTION
Apart from the fact that "where" doesn't get its own sign but gets broken into "what place" (meanwhile "who" does get its own sign), there's the change from "do" to "decide", which reminds me that, hey, this isn't just Japanese-with-your-hands, this really is another language. If I'm going to get anywhere with JSL, that's a realisation that I'm going to have to hold in my head the whole time.
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