Hello! Me again, Some deaf people have told me that liking languages is not a "valid" reason to learn SL, "since is not just a language", ❴very aggressively❵, and that really is discouraged me from LSM and deaf culture :( (but of course, is not like it exist a "valid" reason to learn any language), but others have told me that I can do whatever I want. ¿What do you think? And I also want to thank you a lot, kind persons like you motivated me to keep learning :)
well, every Deaf person is different and we here certainly don’t speak for a whole community.
There are Deaf people who don’t like hearing people learning sign language. They have numerous reasons for that:
- some consider sign language a language of their own community and see hearing people as outsiders who don’t deserve to learn the language
- some are unhappy that deaf people were/are forbidden or discouraged from using sign language, yet hearing people are encouraged
- some have met hearing people who only wanted to learn the language to use swears and/or make profit of it and they are suspicious (there was a case of hearing woman who wrote a bogus dictionary of dirty words in ASL, despite the wishes of Deaf community and her being pretty shit at ASL)
- some think that only valid reason to learn SL is if you want to be an interpreter, etc.
But you will also meet plenty of Deaf people who love to chat with new peeps and who encourage everyone to learn sign language. Tbh, I don’t know what the community is like in Mexico, but if Deaf people do offer lessons there, it means they want others to learn their language. (as a side note - your teacher should definitely be someone Deaf)
Go ahead and learn - there might be people who grumble, but I believe world is better with more people who can communicate with each other. ;)
