American Sign
Language:
Simultaneous Communication (simcom)
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Why can't you speak English and sign ASL at the same
time?
By Donald Grushkin, Ph.D.
5/31/2011
The brain cannot process two separate tasks simultaneously. Ask
a person
to write a sentence in one language (the more non-related to
English, the
better) while speaking the same sentence in another language
SIMULTANEOUSLY.
He won't be able to do it -- not simultaneously, and not
perfectly --
there will be a breakdown in one act/language or the other.
The structures of the two languages are not entirely congruent.
For example, compare French and English:
French: Il fait chaud: "It makes hot"
English: It is hot.
Spanish: Esta casa rojo es de mi tio. (That house red is of my
uncle)
English: That red house is my uncle's.
How is one supposed to simultaneously handle two very different
structures?
Finally, when one tries to speak English while signing ASL, what
will
happen is that the English (which is dominant/native in the
Hearing person) will
"take over" and what the hands produce will not be, and cannot
be,
grammatically correct ASL. To try to simcom is disrespectful to
ASL as a language
in its own right, since Deaf people will NOT see true "ASL" on
the hands
when simcomming is occurring.
/end
________________________________________
Permission to use granted via personal correspondence:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 9:26 PM:
Subject: Re: Why can't you speak English and sign ASL at the
same time?
Reference:
(Grushkin, D. 2011, http://www.deafhooddiscourses.com/?p=353)
________________________________________
Also see:
Sign-Supported-Speech
Also see: Simcom
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