Gallaudet Sign Language Home

Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. will be 160 years old, in 2024. This institution of higher learning for the deaf and hearing impaired is still standing because it embraces all the challenges facing its community, including technology.

It will therefore be the best place to observe how sign language seamlessly incorporates technology. There are signs for laptop, mobile phone, etcetera. Deaf and dumb, a lie we heard so often we ended up believing it. My attempt at learning sign language has stripped away all the stereotypical layers and left me with only one conclusion. I’m the dumb one.

My conditioning looks at life in squares with sharp edges and not circles like the sun and the moon. That is why I carve out my body parts like a butcher skinning an animal.  I use the mouth for eating or producing sounds in local and foreign languages. The eyes are for seeing people and images. Arms are for picking up computer bags and babies. The face is for cosmetics and smiling. 

I say the face because the mouth does not have the monopoly of smiling. It is a rainbow moment that illuminates the whole face, putting life’s daily trauma on hold. A smile is a human phenomenon because I’ve never seen good old mama lion lounging on the grass somewhere in Kenya and Botswana, giving her kids a smile.

Sign language in the estimated 193 countries in the world does not work in cubicles. Deaf people celebrate the whole body. You can hear what they are saying provided you are willing to hear and see.  

I am handicapped because I can only hear. I therefore hide this handicap by being irritated when I come across people using sign language. I even don my superiority mantle and label them ‘dumb’.

Envy is more like it.  One of the devastating effects of a bout of flu is losing one’s voice. Technology, in the form of text messages, e-mail, Twitter, and what have you, has cushioned the fall of losing one’s voice, but the thought is still scary.

However, it is not a life threatening condition for people we wrongly label as ‘deaf and dumb’ because sign language has twins. The hands and eyes are comrades in arms. This bond is so effective it allows sign language to successfully clear hurdles presented by technology, a challenge faced by all living languages. There is a way to sign computer, keyboard, website, e-mail etc.

I appreciate my hands more now since I started sign language classes. I don’t limit them to the steering wheel and changing gears. They are a language laboratory, whether one is using Canadian Sign Language of American Sign Language.  Who? What? Why? Where? When? These were drummed into me at Columbia University J. School but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the correct sequence.

My hands have answers to all these questions. They report the state of the world with all its glories and self-inflicted misery. Sign language is also considerate because it gives my hands a break from time to time. The hands and eyes complement each other but some things are best said with the eyes only.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Executive Blogger