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When I traveled to Quebec City, the heart of French Canada, I realized that I had been misinformed.  The locals, it turned out, were not really bilingual.  They spoke French, and English was a burden.

Since I did not speak French, the only Quebecois I talked to with some depth while I was in Quebec City was a deaf psychologist.  And we conversed in ASL (American Sign Language).

I was able to travel to Quebec City to present a simple statistical analysis of deaf sexual abuse in an international congress.  Before I left, I promised myself to show my gratitude to the people of Canada whose taxes made me participate in the congress.  Thus, when I was there, I tried to befriend at least one of the locals and tried personally to give my gratitude. But I had difficulty conversing in French.

I arrived three days before the start of the conference and on my first day, I was only able to eat once.  I did not understand the directions to the nearest fast food from the university residence where I was staying.  The locals tried their best but I could hardly grasp the directions they gave me.  I could also not easily memorize the French names of the streets and establishments nor get them right—they were not words and sounds I was used to.

The Quebecois’ native language is French and English is a language they seldom use.  They use English as often as Cebuano speakers like me use Tagalog in our Cebuano-speaking hometowns, which is almost never.  In Quebec, most of the television programs, street signs and written materials are in French.

Had I known the situation before I left, I could have brushed up on my four terms of Alliance Francaise French.  I would not have gone hungry.  More importantly, I would have shown the Quebecois deeper respect.  Learning the language of another people is a concrete sign of respect for them.

I learned Sign language in my first couple of months working with the deaf.  I learned the language out of respect for the deaf.  But aside from that, I learned it because I was convinced that any development interventions could only succeed if one starts by listening to the sector one is working with.

Before I came to work with the deaf, I had been working with urban poor communities in Quezon City.  I moved to the deaf sector a few years after Edsa III.  For most of us in the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) working with the urban poor, Edsa III was a sign of both success and failure.  The urban poor had finally shown their immense power when organized, except that it was to support a corrupt and disappointing leader. We realized that we failed to listen completely to the urban poor, and this lesson I brought with me when I moved to deaf work.

I learned the Sign language that has been used by deaf Manileños.  More and more deaf have been calling this language FSL (Filipino Sign Language).  But, FSL, especially the one used by schooled Filipino deaf, has been greatly influenced by ASL.  But, FSL is unique.

Sign languages surface naturally in places where there are deaf persons.  Even when two or three deaf persons are unschooled, and do not have contact with other deaf but themselves, they can create for themselves a means to communicate to each other through signs and gestures.  Two generations of deaf after them could create the grammar and structure from these signs and gestures to become a full-fledged language, complete and effective as any spoken language.

Linguistic researchers have been quite interested, in recent decades, in Sign languages.  Sign may hold the answer to the question on the origins of human languages. Some evolutionary researchers are even considering Sign as the first human language.

Sign languages are not transliterations of spoken languages like English and Filipino.  When I was conversing with Michél, the Quebecois deaf psychologist, he asked me whether I was mouthing French while I was signing to him.  I was mouthing Taglish.  I was a new Sign user and had not totally abandoned myself to it.

Sign languages are spatial and visual languages.  The grammar is in the three dimensions of the upper body space, but add to that the dimension of time.

For the word “follow” in FSL/ASL, for example, one closes both fists but with the thumbs up near the chest; one fist fronts the other and then moves them simultaneously forward as if one thumb is following the other.  If one wants to say “persistently follow,” one could make the back fist tremble while moving forward behind the front fist.  If one wants to say, “falter from following,” one could jerk the back fist to the side while the front fist moves forward.  If one wants to say, “stop from following,” one could just have the back fist stay in its place while the front fist moves forward.  If one wants to say, “follow persistently but then stop and falter and follow persistently again,” well, you probably already know how that is done.

But, let us not forget that Signing is not only about the hands, it also involves other non-manual cues like the expression on one’s face.  Two different messages are received when one signs the words, “persistently follow,” while one smiles and while one looks mad.  There are even phrases in Sign which use only the face.

Sign languages still do not have written forms.  The two-dimensional scripts are perhaps a redundancy or even a demotion of these primarily visual, four-dimensional languages.

Sign may perhaps be the deaf’s greatest contribution to humanity.  The deaf’s visual deftness enhanced by their language could well help us non-deaf in navigating through the future which is becoming more and more inundated with images.

Nov. 10 to 16 is National Deaf Awareness Week, and there is no better way to start becoming deaf-aware than to learn Sign. So, Sign up.

Roberto S. Salva is the executive director of the Catholic Ministry to Deaf People, Inc.  Contact him at [email protected]