The Mandalorian - The Gunslinger

Deaf actor Troy Kotsur invented a sign language for the Tuskens (TSL) which is a nod to Plains Indian Sign Language.

Blind people must save a lot on electricity.

They do actually!

I had a blind professor, last semester, and I swung through his office to make up an exam. It was a while before I knew he was in there because he was sitting with the lights off. I finally went in, apologized, and took the exam by the light of a nearby window (which was fine). Forty-five minutes into dead silence he panicked and yelled in this booming voiced, “WAIT, YOU CAN SEE!!!” before diving across his desk to turn on the lights. I’m sure he was embarrassed but I thought it was endearing and it highlighted a large aspect of disabled life that I hadn’t previously considered.

Sort of relatedly I once had professor who was deaf, but she had learned to read lips and speak so she could communicate easily with hearing people who didn’t know sign language. One day she had gotten off topic and was talking a little about her personal life, so that one of the students said “Oh, I know, I grew up in Brooklyn too.” 

She stared at him for a long time and then said “How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?”

And he said “You have a Brooklyn accent.”

She said “I do?” and the whole class nodded, and then she burst out laughing and said “I had no idea!  The school where I learned to speak was in Brooklyn.  I learned by moving my mouth and tongue the way my teachers did.  So I guess it makes sense that I have their accent, I just never thought about it.”

Wow

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again but it is absolutely an example of civilizational inadequacy that only deaf people know ASL

“oh we shouldn’t teach children this language, it will only come in handy if they [checks notes] ever have to talk in a situation where it’s noisy or they need to be quiet”

My mom learned it because she figured she’ll go deaf when she gets old

My family went holiday SCUBA diving once, and a couple of Deaf guys were in the group. I was really little and I spent most of the briefing overcome with the realization that while the rest of us were going to have regulators in our mouths and be underwater fairly soon, they were going to be able to do all the same stuff and keep talking.

The only reason some form of sign language is not a standard skill is ableism, as far as I can tell.

For anyone interested in learning, Bill Vicars has full lessons of ASL on youtube that were used in my college level classes. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/billvicars

and here’s the link to the website he puts in his videos:

https://www.lifeprint.com/

Don’t leave out any hard of hearing children who come to your door this Halloween, take a minute out of your day to learn a few seasonal asl signs!  These are two different variations of “Happy Halloween” Click here for my source.

halloween is for everyone!!!!!!

this is honestly the cutest thing ever 10/10 will do this year💗💗

And here are the British Sign Language versions. (I love the BLS sign for Halloween. It’s so cute.) 

Deaf inclusion for every holiday!

Love this! I also posted a video the other day of different signs from about 90+ countries for “Happy Halloween” :)

Learn Holidays Signs | Learn American Sign Language | Nyle DiMarco [x]

‪Kindergarteners learned to sign “Happy Birthday” song to Deaf custodian, Mr. James.‬

‪And he was surprised 😭‬

Excerpt from Episode 7 of Lingthusiasm: Kids these days aren’t ruining language. Listen to the full episode, read the transcript, or check out the show notes for links to further reading.

See also the original Space Pidgin quote from Episode 1, or listen to the full episode.

(via lingthusiasm)

We didn’t realize that Space Pidgin would be such a popular theme when we started @lingthusiasm, but hey, give the people what they want.

(via allthingslinguistic)

Holly Maniatty, a certified sign language interpreter upstaged hip-hop icon Snoop Dogg with her enthusiasm during his concert at the Jazz Fest in New Orleans. Maniatty has worked numerous festivals and concerts with well-known rappers including Beastie Boys, Wu-Tang Clan and Killer Mike and this isn’t the first time that she has stolen the show with her major skills.

This looks like some special type of sign language that assists people with understanding the beats and innuendo along with lyrics.

Snoop Dogg made the right choice!

I thought this was so cool and exciting that I went and learned more about the interpreter here: http://www.thestory.org/transcript-interview-holly-maniatty-interpreter-wu-tang-clan it’s really cool how she spends so much time studying the music so that she can express the performer’s personality and intent. She also tries to make jokes/innuendo work, which is why she’s using a lot of extra expressions, and she is using her body to express important parts of the beat. There’s a bit where she “invites (signed) applause” that works really well with the music. Idk, I don’t know enough about signing to really comment on this, but it strikes me that she’s getting a lot of information into her performance.

One bizarre thing I noticed was how all the outlets reporting on Maniatty’s gone-viral performance was the language they used to describe it. They say she “upstaged” Snoop Dogg, that she “out G'ed him” or “stole the show,” and I think they all profoundly missed the point, even if the word choices were subconscious. Look at the OP for this post, it says she “upstaged” him and regularly “steals” the attention. It’s not like she’s a random dancer or attention seeker: she’s hired by the performers to make their performance accessible! This is her job, and she was specifically chosen and invited by the performer to be there. She isn’t stealing the show, she is charged with making it accessible to a Deaf and HoH audience.

And instead of a literal translation of the lyrics (which often doesn’t really work with hip-hop, because a lot of the cleverness/entertainment is in secondary meanings and rhythm) she’s trying to express the intention. I bet the performers who choose her are super glad they did, since she studies them so carefully, and tries to put their stage personalities across in sign! So many more of their fans are getting their money’s worth! She’s not doing it for parody, she’s doing it to serve the audience. If she was a threat to the performance, if the value she’s adding is distracting or “upstaging,” then PEOPLE WOULD USE A LYRIC MARQUEE INSTEAD. Basically live closed-captioning for events. But they don’t, because the whole-body human interpretation is what actually transmits the meaning, and artists want the audience to appreciate then meaning.

So it’s very weird to see so much language in these articles/posts crowing about how this (brilliant, master-of-her-craft) white woman “stole” the show and “did better at it” than Snoop Dogg. A lot of weird intersectional stuff to think about there.

(I’m totally overthinking this, the video is SUCH good fun though! It makes ONE WHOLE exciting performance!!! and we are so lucky to live in a world where there are people who care about making music accessible!

headcanon that since the slytherin common room is under the lake there’s a room where the walls and ceiling are glass and you can just see into the lake like an aquarium

headcanon that when this was first done the mermaids got really aggressive and hateful about it and started ramming the glass but since it was magic this just caused them injuries

until a deaf/hoh slytherin started to teach them sign language and it took a long time bit by the time they left hogwarts they and the rest of the house were communicating with the mermaids and on good terms

eventually it becomes a part of slytherin house culture you’re a slytherin you know sign language because if you don’t chat with the mermaids they get grumpy

this helps a lot of deaf/hoh students

this also gives slytherin the best grades of any house on all aquatic magical studies

the mermaids give terrible dating advice do not trust them

The most common mermaid dating advice, of course, being “Drown him”

(DROWN HIM <3)

((HE’S SURVIVED THAT ALREADY))

Accepted

LAST PART MAKES IT SOLID MOTHERFUCKING GOLD *howling with laughter*

Photos and final product for Mq. & Mrs.’s amazing lgbtq coloring book for kids.

Model : Alicia Michele

hey i made gifs of these so that ppl can see what they look like !! since sometimes just seeing pictures doesn’t always get the sign across

queer:

bi:

transgender:

gay/lesbian:

Awesome

For all my deaf / mute LGBTQ followers or anyone trying to learn

This is such a great post! Deaf and hard of hearing people are members of our community, so let’s show them some love. You can learn ASL online using the resources in this post: http://mashable.com/2014/04/21/how-to-sign/#SdHJ06gZ1Zqy

I will never not reblog this. It’s so hard to come across this post and this ain’t something ASL class will teach you. Sign language is spectrum of widely used languages (they differ country to country) and you never know when you’re going to need it.

Reblog if you think sign language should be taught as a language in schools.

Uhhh….. it was a language option at my high school. Are you saying there are places where it’s not?????

The high school I teach at has Spanish. Nothing else. We literally can’t get teachers for it, nor have we tried in at least three years. We can’t even keep the SPANISH teachers we have.

Wow, that's just incredibly depressing.

Is that a symptom of not having funding for language classes, do you think? Or is there seriously that much of a lack of knowledgeable people available.

In middle school we had a class called Try New Things, and one section was on ASL. We learned the alphabet and basic signs like how to say hello and ask where the bathroom is. I'm like 99% sure our TNT teacher didn't know sign language, he just copied some tutorials and dived into it with us.

Reblog if you think sign language should be taught as a language in schools.

Uhhh..... it was a language option at my high school. Are you saying there are places where it's not?????