Welcome to my online course, which aims to teach you some basic Auslan (Australian sign language). You’ll learn both vocab and concepts for how Auslan is used.

Auslan, like English, is a language that constantly evolves and changes. There is a lot of debate about whether certain signs and phrases are correct or not. Signs are updated to remove racist influences, and then changed back again to be visually appropriate. Signs vary between the states in Australia – for example, the sign for ‘hungry’ in Melbourne is the sign for ‘sexy’ in Sydney! This course reflects how I used Auslan when I lived in Melbourne. It’s not perfect – there are plenty of Deaf people out there who will tell you that some of these signs and ideas are wrong. But if you learn these signs you should be able to communicate with any signing Deaf person in Australia.

To get the most out of this course, it would be great if you can do it with a friend, so you have someone to practise with. Ask if someone else in your household or someone you see regularly can join you. Most lessons have around ten signs to learn – easy to pick up in a single session, and to practise during the week.

A note to Deaf people: Already, as I launch this course, I realise that I have missed many basic words that should be included. I’ve missed entire topics, like sport, because I don’t talk about them much. I would like to invite other Deaf signers to contribute lessons. Film a short video of yourself signing slowly and clearly enough for a non-signer to copy, add a list of vocab, and if appropriate, include some notes as well. Upload it to YouTube and paste a link to it in the comments. Later, I’ll update this course to include any submissions. Feel free to include alternate signs from the ones I’ve given.

A note to hearing people: If there are any signs you’d like to know, please leave your request in the comments. Hopefully then someone will add a video to answer your request. There are also other online resources for learning Auslan, here and here and here. And if you’d like to go to a live class, you’ll find links to them for all states in Australia here.

Want to practise using flash cards? Lee Engelstad, a student of this course, has been making flashcards based on my videos which help you practise individual signs. You can download the flashcards here. Also Lienne Zheng has made a set of flashcards including videos from my course and from the Auslan signbank, which you can access here. Thank you to Lee and Lienne for these very helpful resources.

Videos too fast? If you watch them on YouTube, you can change the speed to 0.25x for while you are learning, and then speed it up as you become more confident.

Which hand to use when signing: When you fingerspell and sign, your dominant hand (the one you write with) does most of the moving, and the subordinate hand forms the base positions. I’m afraid my signs are a bit messy because I fingerspell left-handed and sign right-handed. Therefore, if you are right handed, when you watch my videos, do the fingerspelling mirror-image to me, and transpose the rest of the signs. If you sign with the hand that feels most natural, that will probably work. This course is for beginners and my aim is to help you communicate with Deaf people. If you use the ‘wrong’ hand for a sign, Deaf people will still understand you, so don’t stress about it too much. If you are serious about becoming fluent, it’s good to get the usage of hands correct.

Make a donation: This course is free because I want Auslan to be easily accessible to everyone, and I want to improve the lives of Deaf people who will benefit as more hearing people learn Auslan. I also want to make Auslan accessible to deaf people who are interested in learning to sign. You are one of over 15,000 students, and there is a significant overhead involved in managing a course/site with so many hits. It costs me money as I pay people to help sort out all the issues that come up, and it costs me time as I troubleshoot problems. I have resisted the suggestion that I monetise the course through advertising because I am philosophically opposed to living in a world full of ads. If you want to support my mission to make Auslan available to everyone for free, I would really appreciate a donation.

Other course levels: If you’ve already done Level 1, feel free to jump ahead to Level 2, or to study Level 3: Phrases for medical staff.

Alright, let’s dive in and get started…

Fingerspelling

If you can fingerspell you can communicate with any Deaf person – just spell out every word.

When you fingerspell, your dominant hand (the one you write with) does most of the moving, and the subordinate hand forms the base positions. In the video, I’m fingerspelling with my left hand, so if you are right-handed, you should do the signs mirror-image to me.

Take care that you don’t bend your fingers back unnaturally while fingerspelling. Make each letter smooth – for example, you don’t need to shrug your shoulders or take a deep breath for each letter – work on allowing them to flow naturally.

Practise fingerspelling the alphabet until you are confident with all the letters. A good way to help make your fingerspelling smooth is to spell out the lyrics to a favourite song. It can seem incredibly cumbersome at first, but if you practise it, it will become smooth. Eventually, you may be able to spell fast enough that you can do it along with the song while it plays in real-time. If you drive, practising fingerspelling at the traffic lights is a great habit!

Also, practise reading back fingerspelling from a friend. Learning to read back words is actually harder than learning the letters in the first place. It takes practise! Use context and what you know about your conversation to help you work out what the word might be.

Meet my new book, Future Girl

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My new book, Future Girl, is coming out in October. If you’d like a signed copy, pre-order now.

Future Girl is an own-voice coming-of-age novel set in near future Melbourne, that bursts with passion, resilience, optimism and joie-de-vivre. Presented as 16-year-old Piper’s stunning visual-art journal, the book is an instructional environmental call-to-arms, which explores my detailed experience of Deaf culture and what it feels like to be d/Deaf.

It’s taken me eight years to write and create artwork for this book, and with the final draft, my publisher said to me, ‘This is going to be your masterpiece.’ Aside from wanting to change her word to ‘mistresspiece’, I really hope she is right. You tell me.

Piper’s mum wants her to be ‘normal’, to pass as hearing and get a good job. But when peak oil hits and Melbourne lurches towards environmental catastrophe, Piper has more important things to worry about, such as how to get food. When she meets Marley, a CODA (child of Deaf adult), a door opens into a new world – where Deafness is something to celebrate rather than hide, and where resilience is created through growing your own food rather than it being delivered on a truck. As she dives into learning Auslan, sign language that is exquisitely beautiful and expressive, Piper finds herself falling hard for Marley. But Marley, who has grown up in the Deaf community yet is not Deaf, is struggling to find his place in the hearing world. How can they be together?

If you have shared my posts about Deafness, please share this one. I’ve learnt that there’s an overwhelming desire out there to understand Deafness and Auslan better. This book is your opportunity to dive in deep, and have a rollicking ride of art and urban food production at the same time. I will be so grateful if you can help me spread the word.

Pre-order here.

Thanks!

Greetings

The signs in this video will help you learn to greet a deaf person.

This is the vocab I’ve shown you:

Hello
My
Name
How are you? (this is one sign)
Good
Bad
So’s so
Alright
Hot
Cold
Tired
Please/thank you (use this sign for both please and thank you)

You’ll notice my facial expression changes with each sign. Facial expression is very important in Auslan – practise using appropriate expressions for your signs.

With a friend, practise greeting each other in Auslan. Introduce yourself and fingerspell your name. Through the next week, notice when you feel any of the above feelings, and do that sign to yourself.

Do you have the privilege…?

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In case you can’t read the writing on this painting, it says, ‘Do you have the privilege of being unaware of your Hearing Privilege?’

A friend mentioned that she’d noticed a real sense of ‘hearing privilege’ among her classmates at uni, who treat the the deaf student as though she’s not as intelligent as the rest of them.

‘How do you know they think that?’ I asked.

‘Well, it’s in the subtle things. When we’re discussing ideas for projects, no-one ever asks what she thinks. When we start work, people offer to help her with her work, but never ask her to help them. It adds up.’

My friend just articulated something insidious that I’ve never really been able to put my finger on. That’s how people treat me (until they know me better), and day after day, in situation after situation, I start to find myself feeling like the sweet little pet of those around me, instead of a valuable, interesting contributing member of society.

Being patronised this way is a routine experience for most Deaf people. The problem is not being unable to hear, but the attitude of other people.

Please share this post to do your bit to raise awareness about this tricky issue.

Giclee prints of this artwork are available in my shop and make a fantastic gift.

How to remember vocab and concepts

The critical time for the human brain to forget what it’s learnt is during the first twenty-four hours after acquiring new knowledge. Studies have shown that approximately one hour after learning something, most students can remember about eighty percent of the content. Four hours after learning, they remember less than fifty percent. The next day they remember as little as ten percent. My study recommendations are based on this understanding.

Every time you learn a new piece of vocab, write down the English word. This will remind you that you know this sign so you can practise it. If you feel you need to, write down any information about how to execute the sign, but position this on the page so that it can be covered up for testing yourself.

Watch the video, then practise signing the lists of vocab beneath it. One hour later, come back and try again, without watching the video. After practising, watch the video again and correct your signs where needed. Repeat this twice more if possible. Do it just before you go to sleep when you are tired, and again when you first wake up and are still groggy – in this semi-conscious state, the brain seems to learn well. Do it a few more times that day, and then a couple of times a week for a while.

I use Studyblue, where you can program your own flashcards for testing. Study blue is available as an iPhone app and in your browser, and is a great way to quickly prompt yourself to practise a sign. It even tracks which ones you need more practise with and gives you extra practise at those.

Learn frequently used little words in Auslan – Australian Sign Language

Here are some Auslan signs that are often used in conversation:

Vocab:

Same
Different
Again
Maybe/or
Lots/too much
But
For
Go
Come
With

About opening my own doors…

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Sometimes doors open for me. Mostly I open them myself. This is how I have survived, and thrived, as a Deaf person.

Let me tell you about one way I’ve opened my own door, a while ago. I wanted to study an online course that would teach me how to sell my paintings more effectively. The course was advertised with a limited time to apply, and a limited number of students would be accepted. I emailed the teacher and asked him if it would be accessible to Deaf people. I know he usually teaches using videos, and sometimes has transcripts as well.

I didn’t hear back, and I didn’t want to pester him. Unfortunately I let too much time go by and applications closed. I’d missed out. I was really disappointed. I decided that I’d try to create my own course, and use the internet to answer the questions I wanted answered about selling artworks. I devised my own curriculum.

But unfortunately the finer points of the stuff I wanted to know, I couldn’t glean from Google. No go.

Some months later, the course was advertised again. I didn’t waste any time. I put in my application right away. this time I included the question in my application, ‘Will this course be accessible for Deaf people?’

I got a reply immediately. ‘I’m sorry, but this course is not suitable for deaf.’

There was no mention of how we might find a way to make it work. Sigh. I emailed back, suggesting some ideas. Perhaps I could buy the transcripts from the earlier course, at a reduced price? No, they weren’t available yet. None of my ideas was met with any juice. He pointed me towards another of his courses, one which I felt I already had a pretty good handle on and didn’t need to take.

Nevertheless, I put in the application form for it and described in detail all the achievements of my art business to date, the goals for my business, and exactly how I felt he could help me.

To my surprise, that changed everything. Suddenly the door was open. I sounded hardworking and focussed (yep.. maybe he assumed that Deaf people aren’t?), and I’ve got some momentum happening (yes.. did he assume that I didn’t?)…. From there we were able to negotiate. We’d do type-skypes, and because he was a little slow at typing, he’d throw in an extra one. I really appreciated that. Instead of just me busting a gut to get this information, he was prepared to extend himself too.

I’m most of the way through the course now and the results have been amazing. My art business is going from strength to strength. My teacher has described me as one of his hardest working students, which doesn’t surprise me. I’ve always had to work very hard to get what I want. Because those doors, they don’t open easily. They take a fair bit of prising.

But I’m glad I’ve got the guts to do it, because that’s what’s gotten me where I am today, with a fabulous career, a stack of published books, and a mudbrick eco-home that I built myself.

This painting is for everyone who needs a bit of inspiration to work at their own doors. It’s especially for those of us with some extra challenges to get them open. The original is in a museum in a Deaf school in Delaware, but prints are available in my shop.

If you’d like to do your bit to help raise awareness, feel free to share this post. Thanks!

Learn Auslan signs when asking questions – Australian Sign Language

Use these Auslan signs when asking questions:

Vocab:

Who
What
Where
When
Why
How
How much
How many
Which

In Auslan, the grammar is different from English. When asking a question, the W-word goes last. For example, when asking ‘When did you eat?”, you would sign ‘YOU EAT WHEN?’ To ask “Where do you live?” you sign ‘YOU LIVE WHERE?’

You’ll notice in these examples that I have omitted ‘did’ and ‘do’. In Auslan, words such as “and”, “to”, “a”, “the”, “it”, “be”, “are” etc. are not used. Simply delete them from the sentence.

Sometimes in Auslan, the W-word goes both first and last. This is known as bracing. E.g. WHO WASH-DISHES WHO?

There is no time when the W-word is first, but not last, the way it is in English.

For this week, practise asking questions. If you don’t know the signs for the vocab you want to use, fingerspell the words. By fingerspelling words you don’t know, you create a space in your brain for them, so when you learn the sign for that word you will remember it more easily.

Prints and artworks about Deafness

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If you’d like some artwork on the wall that is for Deaf people, by a Deaf artist, and reflects Deaf values, you might like one of my prints. I have heaps of different images available and they include Deaf activism, Deaf experience and Deaf pride.

These prints are great for the lounge room wall, and would also suit spaces where services are offered to Deaf people – think Deaf units in schools, Deaf clubs/societies, audiology clinics, interpreting agencies and more.

If you want something striking, or a splash of colour, along with a great message, check out my prints here.

Is sign language universal?

No, it’s not, for the same reason that spoken language is not universal. Just like spoken language, sign language evolves naturally in different geographic locations. For example, a Deaf British convict, Betty Steele, who used British Sign Language, spread the use of sign language when she arrived in Australia. With time and distance, Australian sign language (Auslan) has evolved to be different from British Sign Language (BSL), although you can still see the similarities, such as that we use two hands to fingerspell.

In France, a different system of sign language was used, which entailed fingerspelling with one hand. When Deaf people from France colonised America, the language evolved into American Sign Language (ASL). Hence, although hearing people in Australia and America speak English, the Deaf people in the two countries know vastly different languages.

However, sign language the world over tends to be very visual, and Deaf cultures bear remarkable similarities. A Deaf friend of mine who went to Japan said she found Japanese (hearing) culture so different from Australian culture, it was difficult for her to connect with Japanese people. But when she went to a Deaf event and met Japanese Deaf people, their communication style was remarkably similar to the way Australian Deaf people communicate and relate to one another. She felt right at home.

If you have two hearing people who speak different language, such as English and Mandarin, working out how to communicate with one another can be extremely challenging. However, two Deaf people who know very different types of sign language often establish communication swiftly. I had experience of this myself when I met a group of Deaf women at a train station in France. Although I knew no French sign language and they knew no Auslan, within half an hour we were chatting enthusiastically about abstract topics such as planned obsolescence.

How did we do this? First we would establish common signs by using mime. When they realised I didn’t know French sign language, they asked me where I was from. I drew the outline of Australia with my finger in the air, then I mimed being a kangaroo. They understood immediately and showed me their sign for Australia. I showed them mine. We each remembered the others’ signs and from that point onwards, we would use the sign in either of our languages to refer to Australia. We would use mime to tell little stories, showing each other the signs as we went, and the concepts became more and more abstract.

A side note to this story is that if you are Deaf and you meet another Deaf person, anywhere in the world, there is an instant understanding of kinship – that we are all part of one big ‘Deaf family’. At that same train station, I might have asked a hearing person the time, and that would have been the end of our conversation. But when I went up to the group of Deaf women and let them know I was also Deaf, they embraced me into their group as if I was an old friend, and we began the process of getting to know each other. This is a wonderful and heart-warming aspect of the Deaf community.

Learn frequently used little words 2 in Auslan – Australian Sign Language

Here are some more signs that are often used in conversation:

Vocab:

Look
See
Right
Wrong
Help
Some
Nothing/none/silence
Sorry
Most
Thing

In the video I signed ‘sorry’ with a few too many shakes. Just moving your hand twice will do the job.

Read Future Girl to learn more about Deafness and Deaf Culture

Auslan cannot be separated from the Deaf community. To understand Auslan properly, and to use it appropriately and effectively, you need to understand what it really means to be Deaf, and the issues d/Deaf people face in everyday life. My novel, Future Girl, provides detailed insight into Deaf culture and what it feels like to be d/Deaf.

As well as being an exploration into d/Deaf identity, Future Girl is a captivating own-voice coming-of-age novel set in near future Melbourne, that bursts with passion, resilience, optimism and joie-de-vivre. An instructional environmental call-to-arms, it is also an utterly gorgeous art journal – 384 pages, no less, of full-colour art.

In Future Girl, I made Piper d/Deaf because I realised how little the average hearing person knows about d/Deafness. When I first tried to write about Piper’s experience, I found myself stuck, because for me, being Deaf is an ordinary part of my existence – something I take for granted and don’t think about a lot. I found I didn’t know how to articulate it. So I started jotting down my experiences with Deafness every day – the little annoyances, the benefits, confusing moments, the irritating things people say and do, and the subtle but complex feelings that arose when someone has tried to provide access but missed the mark. I began to articulate aspects of Deafness I had never seen described before. For example:

A Deaf dilemma: if you’re standing with a group of hearing people who are laughing, but you have no idea what they are laughing about, should you laugh along to be friendly (and if you do, are you somehow ‘lying’ about having understood?), or stand there with a stony face even though it could seem rude and unfriendly?

I had never realised I was making these difficult decisions on the fly, every day, without analysing how I wanted to approach them. My responses were automatic: I laughed along. But did I really want to do this? Perhaps it would be better to let people know that I felt left out. I have woven many dilemmas and insights such as this into Future Girl.

I began posting on Facebook and my blog about my discoveries. Every single post I made went viral, such is the public hunger for this information. Hearing people thanked me for the insight and told me they had never realised we had such difficult decisions to make. Deaf people told me they felt validated, to see their experiences laid out so clearly, and in a form that they could easily share with others. This is how I became a Deaf activist.

‘Future Girl is a must-read for Deaf people, who will identify with Piper, and for those who are hearing, offering an understanding of what it’s like to be Deaf. It takes me back to my own struggle to fit in and my transformation into loving myself as I am: a signing Deaf woman with a place in both the Deaf and hearing worlds.’
DRISANA LEVITZKE-GRAY, Young Australian of the Year, 2015

You might wonder why I write ‘d/D’ when I refer to d/Deafness. A lower case ‘d’ refers to deafness as a medical condition – the simple fact of being unable to hear fully. A capital ‘D’ refers to Deaf people who are members of the Deaf community – a cultural group, similar to ‘Italians’ and ‘Greeks’. In Future Girl, Piper starts out oral (which means she lipreads and communicates verbally) and considers herself to be ‘deaf’. By the end of the book, she has discovered Deafness and is working out to what extent she wants to embrace Deaf culture and identity, and to what extent she wishes to retain her oral deaf upbringing.

I hope that Future Girl will inspire d/Deaf people on all parts of the spectrum from ‘deaf’ to ‘Deaf’ to make conscious choices about how they respond to life as a d/Deaf person in a hearing world. I hope that hearing people will become more aware of the complex challenges we face and become more supportive and understanding about the multitude of ways we might respond and not expect us to handle our d/Deafness in ways they might formerly have felt most appropriate.

A note to hearing parents of deaf children

It may be your goal for your child to grow up to be as normal as possible. You might not realise that this can put a huge pressure on us. While some people who are d/Deaf or have a disability do put a high value on ‘passing as normal’, many of us would rather take a different approach: that of accepting that we are different and asking for our needs to be met. Piper’s experience of growing up oral and then discovering and choosing to embrace aspects of Deaf experience is very common. She feels guilt for breaking away from what her mother believes is best for her, resulting in a complex and tumultuous relationship with her mother. Your child may eventually undertake a similar journey. I urge you to read Future Girl so that you can understand and support this journey as early as possible, sidestepping the conflict.

Learn Auslan – Some words to indicate purpose

Here are some common signs that indicate purpose:

Vocab:

Will
Won’t
Can
Can’t
Want
Don’t want
Have
Don’t have (here I demonstrate the handshape I’m using)
Need
Must
Should
Prefer
Because
Can’t be bothered (you’ll see that sometimes a whole English phrase is captured with a single sign)

In the video I signed ‘prefer’ with several flicks. But really, it should be just two flicks.

Typical stupid conversations about Deafness

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This video is hilarious. Unfortunately, it’s so true. It’s not just interpreters who have these kinds of stupid, STUPID conversations with people who have never thought about what it means to be Deaf. Deaf people have them too… all the time. I can really relate to this. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve had to respond to people like this lecturer, while trying to remain polite and gracious. I wish we had some basic education about Deafness for all school children, so that by the time they are grown up, they have sorted out how to deal with Deaf people and interpreters without being complete #!@%wits.

Learn Auslan – Signs for babies (and adults too)

It’s quite popular for parents who don’t sign themselves to teach their babies some signs. This means babies can communicate before they are able to speak. This lesson and the next two have signs that are helpful when communicating with young children, though they are also good signs for anyone to know. When I taught in a kindergarten, these were the most helpful words that allowed us to communicate with very young children.

Vocab:

Food
Drink
Milk
More
Finish
Sleep (I show you two signs for this)
Awake/Wake up
Yes
No

Finish and more are the most useful signs – as these are abstract concepts that children often want to communicate but cannot. At a meal time, always ask if your child has finished, using the sign. If they haven’t, sign ‘more’. When they do finish, confirm it by signing ‘finish’ yourself. By doing this every time, your child will quickly learn the meaning of the words.

I should have included the sign for ‘toilet’. Luckily you don’t need a video for that. It’s just the letter T, fingerspelled twice: ‘TT’.

If you define me

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I’m Deaf. But being Deaf is not the most remarkable thing about me. People who know me will tell you that far more interesting is my creative drive, the fact that for holiday reading I’ll read a business text book and write my own precis, or that I built my own house when I was 22 and it has a huge food garden, including animals that I raise and kill myself for meat. In fact, there are lots of things more interesting about me than my Deafness.

But it can be really hard for people who meet me to get a handle on this. The Deaf thing leaps out at them. I’ve been knocked back from courses, where I would probably be the hardest working and most devoted student, because the idea of catering for a Deaf student is just too overwhelming for the teacher, and all they can see is my Deafness (along with, I suspect, a bit of the old assumption that to be Deaf is to be stupid, and therefore it’s probably not even worth teaching me anyway).

Knowing Anna as I do, this OUTRAGED me. To think that she was seen as only having value to Deaf students, but not to hearing students. Aside from being a terrific model for diversity, Anna is funny, smart, compassionate and highly entertaining. If I was a hearing student, I would learn bucketloads from having her for a teacher. And one of the main things I’d learn is that Anna’s Deafness is not her main talent. No – it’s her incredible wit and ability to hit the nail on the head, which would make learning fun and easy. But I’d also learn that Deaf people can be more than their label.

So, I’m asking you, next time you meet a person who is Deaf, or a person who uses a wheelchair, or has some other physical condition that seems remarkable, remind yourself that it’s probably not the most remarkable thing about them. And you won’t even know what IS remarkable, until you get to know them.

Please feel free to share this post.

Enjoying this course? Make a donation

This course started as a few quick videos to help a friend learn Auslan. is course is free because I want Auslan to be easily accessible to everyone, and I want to improve the lives of Deaf people who will benefit as more hearing people learn Auslan. I also want to make Auslan accessible to deaf people who are interested in learning to sign, as learning Auslan was life-changing for me.

However, the course takes up a lot of my time. Students email with questions, technical problems happen constantly, and there is a significant overhead involved in managing a course/site with so many students. It costs me money as I pay people to help sort out all the issues that come up. I have resisted the suggestion that I monetise it through advertising, because I am philosophically opposed to living in a world full of ads.

So… if you are benefitting from this course, if you want to help this endeavour to create a world that is more accessible for Deaf people, and support my mission to make Auslan available to everyone for free, I would really appreciate a donation.

Think about what you’d pay to attend a live course of a similar quality and content. VicDeaf charges $235 for their six week live course. I’m not saying you should pay that to me. Pay what you can afford and what you feel it’s worth. Your dollars will be well spent, I promise.

If you’re happy to make a contribution, you can do so right here:

Thank you so very much,

Learn Auslan – Animals

A great way to get children interested in signing is to teach them the signs for animals.

Vocab:

Cat
Dog (pat your thigh twice)
Rabbit
Bird/chicken
Horse
Sheep
Cow
Giraffe
Elephant
Lion
Monkey
Gorilla
Dinosaur

It is not my goal to be normal

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When I was a child, my parents watched them patronise me, talking over-loudly with me, they noticed that if they told people I was deaf, they’d have to deal with their heartbreak and sorrow on my behalf. They’d watch them patronise me, talking over-loudly with simplistic language appropriate for a much younger child.

Eventually, they figured out it was better to zip their mouths about my deafness, and let them see, through interacting with me, that I was just like any other child – racing around the house with my siblings, spilling apple juice and playing hospital games with toilet paper for bandages. Later, they’d say, quietly like it was no big deal, “Oh, by the way, she’s a little bit deaf.”

They chose not to use sign language with me, figuring that the more ‘normal’ I seemed, the better I’d fit into the world and the more appropriately people would treat me.

I get why my parents made these choices for me. They did the best they could.

But there’s a flip side. I grew up thinking I was only a ‘little bit deaf’ and that it was my own fault that I didn’t concentrate hard enough to understand people. The entire burden of communication rested on my shoulders, as I struggled to make sense of the world through lipreading, with no accommodation by others. There was a subtle but definite pressure to be as ’normal’ as possible, and not to make waves or ask for help because of my deafness.

As an adult, I’ve discovered that by letting the world see I’m deaf, I can share the burden of communication with others, and I can relax more, instead of always being alert to the possibility of people speaking to me. Using sign language, I can chat in a group and it’s enjoyable and relaxing, unlike trying to lipread, which is basically impossible in a group setting.

Instead of straining to be something I’m not, by ‘passing’ as hearing, I choose to be me as I am – Deaf – and to set up my life to be as Deaf-friendly as possible. That makes my world smaller, more limited, but it also makes it more relaxing and enjoyable, and on the balance, that’s what I prefer and choose.

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Learn Auslan – Transport

Kids love learning and using transport signs:

Vocab:

Walk
Run
Ride a bike
Car
Drive
Train
Tram
Bus
Taxi
Plane/fly
Airport (sorry, the subtitle says ‘landing’. This sign is used for both ‘landing’ and ‘airport’)
Station

Other signs that kids often embrace are colours and foods – they are covered in other lessons. For our next lesson, though, we’ll get back to signs commonly used by adults.

I was a bit over-enthusiastic when signing some of these. While signing like this is not really ‘wrong’ and Deaf people will still understand you, it would be correct to sign ‘run’ with just two rotations of my arm, and ‘ride a bike’ should also be two cycles of pedaling with my fingers, and ‘car’ should be two rotations of my fists. ‘Bus’ should be two twists of the steering wheel. My apologies that these videos aren’t perfect – I hope they’ll still help you learn.

Deaf dilemma – to laugh or not?

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When I was a kid, I always laughed along. I didn’t even know I did it. I survived by copying faces. Someone was upset, I’d make sympathetic faces while they spoke to me. Someone was excited, I’d let out a little excited yelp too.

I didn’t even realise I did this until I was in my late teens. And when I did, it occurred to myself that I was doing myself a disservice. By copying faces, it gave people the impression that I understood what was being said. If instead, I gave them a quizzical expression, I’d be more likely to get an actual explanation.

I set about trying to break my habit. It’s deeply ingrained. I still do it sometimes, but mostly I try to be more honest about when I have and haven’t understood.

But it’s really difficult when I’m standing in a group, say, of people I don’t know that well, but whom I hope to get to know and want to make a good impression on. They’re all laughing. If I stand there, blank-faced, it feels incredibly rude. But it’s also often not right to interrupt them and demand that they explain, especially if we’ve only just met. And yet, if I laugh along, that gives them the impression I understand, and it doesn’t let them know that if this relationship is going to work, I’m going to need a bit more information.

It’s tricky. I don’t have an answer for how us Deaf people should handle this situation. I just wanted to raise some awareness about it.

But, if you’re with a Deaf person and the group starts laughing, maybe you’ll consider leaning over to explain.

If you’d like to do your bit to help raise awareness, feel free to share this post. Thanks!

Learn Auslan – Deafness and sign language

Here are some signs about being deaf and using Auslan (Australian sign language):

Vocab:

Deaf
Hearing
Sign
Language
Auslan (Australian sign language)
Fingerspell/spell
Alphabet (A-Z)
Voice
Lock your voice/voice off
Oral (this is also the sign for lipread)

There are some words and phrases here that aren’t commonly used in mainstream English.

People who aren’t deaf are referred to as ‘hearing’. Deaf people who don’t use sign language, communicating with speech and lipreading, are described as ‘oral’. I grew up oral and learnt to sign when I was eighteen – this is a common situation for Deaf people in Australia.

Fingerspelling refers to manually spelling out the letters of words. If you don’t know the sign for a word, fingerspell it. In Auslan, fingerspelling is commonly used for names and places. Some words, such as ‘cream’ are always fingerspelled, and the fingerspelled version becomes a sort of ‘sign’ for that word. There are some English words for which there is no equivalent Auslan sign. In this case, you could fingerspell the word, though more fluent signers will usually find a way to visually convey the meaning of the word using Auslan signs.

Lock your voice: since Auslan has its own grammar, trying to speak English while signing can be challenging, and also make your signs difficult to understand. It’s common in Auslan to refer to ‘turning off your voice’ or ‘locking your voice’ which means that you don’t speak – just sign. However, if you are speaking English with a group of hearing people, and there is a Deaf person present, it is polite to sign whatever words you can, even if it’s not using correct Auslan grammar, so that the Deaf person can get an idea of what you are talking about.

Deaf people often need to work harder

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Deafness is not visible, and some of the difficulties Deaf people face can be invisible to hearing people, who can easily take ‘hearing privilege’ for granted. Here, I wanted to raise some awareness about the extra work that Deaf people often do, in order to achieve the same outcomes as hearing people.

A simple example that many Deaf people will relate to is my university maths class. I couldn’t understand the lecturer, who spoke into the whiteboard as he wrote his notes. At that time, I couldn’t sign well, so an interpreter was not an option for me. Instead, I dutifully copied out all the notes on the blackboard, and took them home to try and figure it out. Figuring it out meant hassling my father, who kindly gave me about an hour a day of his time to go over the material, and studying the text book at length. For me to pass that course, I think I put in twice the amount of time that any other student put in, and even then I only just scraped through. University level maths was hard!

Another example is when I wanted to become a professional circus performer. Joining a professional circus company was not an option for me at that time. There simply wasn’t money available for interpreters, and the companies who were interested in me were not in a position to change their entire working environment in order to accomodate my needs. Fair enough. I decided to go solo.

I created my own acts to perform freelance, and approached the agencies that my circus friends got lots of work through. However, I did not receive a single booking. I think they did not feel comfortable putting my material in front of their clients, as they weren’t confident that I, as a Deaf person, would handle the requirements in a professional manner.

With yet another dead end for my desired career, I decided to make it happen myself. I invested my personal savings to pay someone to ring festivals and tell them about my acts. I then posted them the same promotional material that my agents had. Finally! I got bookings! This was before email was popular. I had to spend a lot of time and money training up my admin assistants to present me in exactly the way I wanted to be presented. But the hard work and cost paid off, and for the next ten years I earned a living as a freelance circus performer.

For those of you with hearing privilege, keep in mind the ‘head wind’ that Deaf people often need to deal with in order to get ordinary, everyday tasks done, and in order to get and hold down a job. Perhaps you’d consider hiring a Deaf person, (most Deaf people work very hard – we are used to that in order to survive), or extend an opportunity that just makes life that bit easier.

It happened for me when Arts Centre Melbourne hired me to tell stories as part of a project they were running, and, without me needing to ask, they also hired my interpreter. They had to pay double, to get my stories, compared to what they paid their other storytellers. I like to think it was worth it for them. But maybe, my stories had to be twice as good….

If you’d like to do your bit to help raise awareness, feel free to share this post. Thanks!

Learn Auslan – Communication

Here are some signs about communication:

Vocab:

Communicate/Conversation
Talk
Ask
Answer
Question
Say/tell
Agree

What is it like to be the only Deaf person at a social event?

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This is one of my favourite artworks. It hangs above my bed. It’s not that I don’t like socialising. There is nothing I love more than an intense, in-depth catch up with a good friend. But what I hate with a vengeance is going to events filled with hearing people who can’t sign, and being expected to somehow enjoy myself, while forbidden from doing any activity that is actually enjoyable.

Don Grushkin captured the problem exactly in hi s blog post about how boring it is for us.

‘Don’t dare bring a book or watch tv instead. That’s “rude” (but it’s not rude to basically exclude a person who is supposed to be there?). Don’t bring a Deaf friend to chat with and have the temerity to not use your voices to chat with them, thereby depriving the hearing people of knowing what you two were talking about (even though we have been sitting there among you, and nobody checks to make sure we know what they’re talking about).’

Countless times I have brought along a book, only to be told how rude it is for me to sit at the table in a restaurant reading. Tired of dealing with this accusation, I have branched out. I bring knitting, hand-sewing, or drawing instead. Then I am branded (somewhat unkindly) as weird or nanna-like. I try to wear the badge of weirdness proudly and just stick at it. But wouldn’t it be nice if it was socially acceptable instead?

One time, after spending all day with a group of hearing people, and wandering off for a cry, I was fetched back by someone who noticed I wasn’t handling things too well. We set up my phone and keyboard at the table and she typed for me some of the jokes people were sharing. I started to understand why they were all having such a rollicking ball while I was swallowing back tears. I felt a bit guilty about the effort this woman was making on my behalf, so to make it more worth her while, I typed back witty little quips in response to the things various people were saying. She laughed. Everyone stopped and stared at her. ‘You two are sharing secrets! That’s rude!’ The person mimed us huddled together, typing away wickedly. I didn’t want to make my typist feel awkward, so I just laughed it off. But what I wanted to say was, ‘How can you possibly accuse us of sharing secrets when you have spent ALL DAY laughing over jokes you wouldn’t share with me?!’

Faced with the pressure to attend family events, I tried bringing along a signing friend. Sure enough, I was later accused of being ‘anti-social’ when she was there, because we tended to sit together and chat with each other in Auslan, and didn’t mix with others much. They didn’t want me to bring her in future. It’s far less anti-social for me to sit there wondering what they are all talking and laughing about and whether they will take a pot-shot at me if I whip out my book or knitting.

If you are inviting a deaf person to a social event, stop and think about how they are going to access it. Perhaps you could book an interpreter (pay for it yourself – don’t ask the deaf person to – our interpreting bills are already high!) or invite some other deaf/signing people too. If there’s a movie involved, ensure it has subtitles. If there will be speeches, ask for a print out. Make sure the deaf person you invite knows the efforts you are going to to ensure their inclusion, so they know they don’t need to ask or try to figure it out themselves.

Learn Auslan – Pronouns

Learn Auslan pronouns. In Auslan, pronouns are not gender-specific. Mostly, they involve pointing at a person or object.

Vocab:

Me (use this for ‘I’ as well)
My
Mine
You
Your
Yours
You’re
Here
There
That/he/she/it (I show three examples of pointing.)

When using these words in conversation, point to the person or thing. If the person or thing is not there, invent a location for them them in space and make sure you continue to point to the same spot for the rest of the conversation.

You might notice that it can be pretty hard to understand sign language if you come in on a conversation in the middle. That’s because often a speaker will set up spaces and words at the beginning of a conversation, and then just do a lot of pointing to convey meaning after that.

Deaf is the new black

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Even though it’s really hard being Deaf at times, if I could choose to be hearing, I wouldn’t. Let me tell you what I love about being Deaf.

• I can claim sign language – the most beautiful and expressive language ever – as my own, and use it whenever I want. I can sign songs, and that is visual poetry, I tell you.

• I can sleep through anything

• Snoring doesn’t bother me.

• When I work with power tools, I don’t need to wear earmuffs.

• I can go shopping in complete silence if I take off my hearing aids. No couples bickering, children’s tantrums, blaring announcements or background music.

• In noisy environments, I am serene.

• I have a fantastic visual memory and am very observant.

• I’m granted an automatic passport to the Deaf community.

• People give me free things, discounts and little extras all the time.

• I read peoples’ faces and body language better than most.

• I communicate well with people who don’t speak English, as I know how to get messages through visually.

• Everyone remembers me.

• When I meet others who are ‘different’ in some way, we share an instant kinship and openness with one another.

• I can get away with almost anything by smiling sweetly.

• I can ignore you when you speak and you’ll never suspect I heard.

This is an original artwork mounted on a reclaimed wooden backing. If you’d like it, it’s available in my shop.

Learn Auslan – More frequently used words

Here are some more signs that are often used in conversation:

Vocab:

Interesting
Clever (I show the handshape – thumb up)
Stupid
Dangerous
Little
Big
Give
Take
Fast
Slow/long
Enough
Wait

In the video, I’m a bit over-enthusiastic in signing ‘dangerous’. Really, doing two shakes of my hand is more correct. Note, this is similar to the sign for ‘sorry’, but with ‘sorry’, your fingers are more spread out. Also, when I do the sign for ‘enough’ I should have just done two rotations.

Should you really be giving me that little extra, just because I’m Deaf?

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should-you-really-be-giving-me-that-bit-extra-1

When I was travelling in France, my friend Jenine and I went into a bakery. When Jenine ordered, the guy serving us threw in a couple of extra pastries for free. Jenine blinked in astonishment. ‘It must be because you’re with me. I NEVER get freebies.’

I think she was right. You see, I get freebies all the time. Let me tell you about this lovely lady who works at my favourite op shop. The first time I visited, she took a shine to me. Even though she doesn’t normally work the checkout, once I’d selected my purchases, she rang them up for me specially. I almost died when I saw the total price. It was a quarter of what I expected to pay. ‘You ask for me, next time you come in,’ she told me. I do, and every single time I walk out of there loaded up with goodies that I’ve barely paid a cent for.

While this is a somewhat extreme example, I’m prone to getting special trestment everwhere I go. Airports, I am led straight through – I don’t wait in many queues. Discounts are mine for the smile. If I want to use a toilet in a shop and it’s against their policy, they’ll let me use theirs anyway. Some of my friends know how to work the system. When it’s time to pay, they sends me up the front.

Why do I collect these privileges, when people like Jenine, who are so much kinder, more generous, thoughtful and deserving than I, never get them?

I can only assume it’s because I’m Deaf. People see me signing and feel compelled to go that extra mile for me. A sweet smile just seals the deal. A friend of mine with a Deaf daughter mentioned that her daughter gets free stuff all the time too. So do my other Deaf friends.

My attitude is this: scoop it up. Afterall, I have to put up with the suckier parts of being Deaf. Why not enjoy some benefits too?

But there’s something uneasy for me about all this. Deep down, I suspect that if the people dishing up the freebies to me really knew me, they wouldn’t give me a thing. I’m not as sweet and innocent as I look. I live in fear that they might discover the real me.

I’m also suspicious of what motivates all this giving. The only thing I can really come up with is that they feel sorry for me and want to give something to someone worse off than they are. It’s a laudable idea. We should all do it. But am I really worse off? I mean, there are some serious downsides to being Deaf, but there are some pretty good perks. The ones I’ve mentioned here are just the tip of the iceberg. If I could choose, I’d still choose to be Deaf. Really. I don’t know much about my Op Shop Lady, but I’m willing to guess that at that time I had a nicer life than she did. I mean, her life might be great, but she often looked kind of tired and worn down, whereas I normally felt inspired and was lucky enough to have a career that I couldn’t wait to get out of bed in the morning for.

It leads me to think it must be connected to the attitude our society has in general towards Deafness, that it’s a tragedy that must be fixed and helped at all cost. That Deaf people lead impoverished lives and are to be pitied and helped. And you know, this belief system just doesn’t resonate with me. Yes, I want society to change to be more Deaf-accessible, but I dont want people to think my life is awful just because I’m Deaf. Because it’s not.

For much of my life, things have been awesome – I’ve had great jobs, enough money and physical ability to afford to wait in queues and pay a fair price for my shopping and walk a bit further to go to the toilet. It was me who should have been doing the giving.

If you’d like to do your bit to raise awareness about deafness, feel free to share this post. Thanks!

International travel as a Deaf person

I thought I’d write a post about my experiences with international travel as a Deaf person. I find it surprising, how very different it feels to be Deaf in different places. Culture changes everything.

My favourite Deaf travel story

Let me start with my favourite Deaf travel story… I was travelling with my partner Paula, and as we checked in they figured out I was Deaf. There was some kerfuffle but we were released into the wilds of the airport. As we waited at the gate, Paula nudged me and told me. “There’s an announcement over the loudspeaker. Can all Deaf people and parents with children please come to the gate now to board first.” As you’d expect, there was a flurry of parents and kids heading to the gate. But strangely enough… no Deaf people.

This announcement highlights something I encounter over and over again. Well-meaning people who attempt to cater for my needs, but who haven’t actually thought about what it means to be Deaf.

A first encounter with Deafness

Let me tell you about Joe, who I met in a shop in France. He said something to me, which I didn’t understand, and my friend Jenine explained to him that I’m Deaf. No worries. Conversation with Jenine goes on. He asked her how we were enjoying the music festival.

She explained that actually we weren’t attending the music festival. “But why not? It’s free. You should go to the concert tonight.”

“Well Asphyxia can’t hear it.”

This hit Joe hard. Hand to his heart, sorrow on his face. He turned to me. “You can’t hear MUSIC?! But what is life without music?” (Or something.. the facial expression said it all – I didn’t catch his words.)

I shrugged. “It’s ok. I’m happy as it is.”

Then Joe has a deep idea. “You know, you could get a bionic ear. Have you thought about that? Then you could hear music.”

Let’s just pause here for a moment. Does Joe really believe I’ve gone my entire life, without it occurring to me until now, that the bionic ear (or a cochlear implant) is a possibility? Does he really think that now he’s suggested it, I’m going to go home and look into the idea? And, for that matter, does he think he’s the first to come up with such wisdom?

In fact, this is something I find intensely irritating, the need to discuss, regularly, with perfect strangers, the intimate details of what operations I might choose to have. I have, in the past, explained to people like Joe, that actually, a cochlear implant or bionic ear would do nothing for me since my ears work fine. It’s the nerves connecting my ears to my brain that don’t work. Which means I’d need a nerve implant in my brain. Forget it – I ain’t letting any surgeon poke around in there. But I’m sick and tired of explaining my medical situation to strangers.

My friend Anna came up with a marvellous response:

“Have you thought about having botox? I feel it would really help your situation.”

But sadly I can’t bring myself to use it. Joe meant well. He just hadn’t thought about Deafness before and I had the great joy of participating while he had his first, elementary encounter with the concept.

Yeah, so that’s Joe, in France. There’s Joes all over Australia too – I meet them all the time. It may well have been a Joe who made that announcement over the loudspeaker at the boarding gate.

Being Deaf in Norway and Denmark

Contrast that with my experience in Norway and Denmark. For the first time ever in my life, I was actually treated like a normal person. I found out recently that in Norway they teach the finer points of knitting and yarn management in schools. I reckon they must also do a unit or two on Deafness, because they seem to know that:

a) being Deaf does not mean you are stupid

b) rather than expecting Deaf people to lipread you so you can carry on as normal, you should attempt to communicate in a more visual way, such as through mime or writing

c) you don’t need to apologise to anyone for their Deafness, nor discuss their medical needs, nor even make a big deal about it at all.

The response, when I told a person in Denmark or Norway that I was Deaf was “Oh, right.” They’d then grab a piece of paper and write to me, or else point and mime to clarify whatever we were attempting to communicate about. And nothing was a big deal. I didn’t need to witness anyone’s heartbreak that I can’t hear the birds twittering or the free piano concert.

The finer points of Deafness seem to be common knowledge

In fact, even the finer points of Deafness seemed to be common knowledge. When I arrived to stay with my AirBnB host, she was already aware that Deaf people don’t tend to know how much noise they make. (Paula is always complaining about how loud I am in the kitchen, or how I inadvertently slam doors – because I can’t hear myself to self-monitor.) Daisy’s tour of her apartment, as she showed me how to use the shower and how to jiggle the key just so, included a recommendation that I not rustle the cutlery in the drawer as it’s particularly loud, and there’s a certain door that is very noisy so I should make the effort to close it quietly.

Wow. I’ve never met a person in Australia with that much awareness, other than those within the Deaf community. What was even more astounding is that Daisy did not proceed to tell me how she acquired her knowledge of Deafness. She didn’t say that she’d once had a Deaf guest who was incredibly noisy, nor that her mum’s second cousin can’t hear. The Deaf thing was just something to be dealt with along with everything else. Unremarkable. What a bloody relief.

Don’t expect me to lipread

In fact, I didn’t realise how much of a relief it was, until I landed in France, which is much more like Australia when it comes to responding to Deaf people. Whenever I told someone I was Deaf they’d point to their lips and expect me to lipread. When I made it clear I hadn’t a hope in hell of lipreading French, that was the end of the conversation. Well, from my end it was. From their end it was far from over. They proceeded to speak to me in French, at full speed, often turning away without making eye contact, and somehow presumed I’d understand.

The eye contact was appalling. I often communicate with a mix of mime and body language, but getting the French people to look at me so I could do so was quite a headache.

Talk to ME! (Not my companion)

At one point, Jenine was talking to our AirBnB host in France, and I had a question. Rather than put Jenine in the position where she had to ask the question on my behalf, I wrote it down on a piece of paper. I waited for what I hoped was an appropriate pause in the conversation, hoping I could catch the host before she turned away. Eventually I handed her the piece of paper with my question.

Her response? Even though I had a pen handy so she could write back, she didn’t even look at me. She simply made her reply to Jenine. They talked for a bit and then the host left.
What the fuck? Jenine did her best to explain. I find this so rude. What if I had had a follow up question? Why couldn’t the woman have communicated directly with me? It was around this time I gave up trying to communicate effectively in France, and started to assume I would just be ignored, which was mostly the case.

Being Deaf can be ‘special’

When I travelled to Morocco, it was different again. At that time I was with my partner, Paula. I’ve been told that there’s a Muslim belief that if you are born with a disability, then you are closer to God. Whether this is true or not, I don’t know. But a lot of people liked to touch me, for good luck. Rather than being ignored, I was special. Red carpet and VIP treatment. Everyone assumed that Paula was my carer, travelling with me simply to serve me. And apparently it was natural that, as my ‘carer’ she would have to sleep in the same bed as me. Presumably to minister to my needs 24/7. Wow. If I haggled at the markets, I got the best price. Even if I didn’t, I’d be given something for free.

The freebies are nice, I’ll grant that. So are the low prices (I get both of these to an extent in Australia too). But what I liked best of all, by a long, long shot, was that little taste of just being an ordinary person in Norway and Denmark. That was good, SO GOOD, I could almost cry thinking about it.

How to improve the situation

And that leads me to think, how good it would be, here in Australia, if we were to have a unit on Deafnes, and on other disabilities too, as part of our school curriculum. Or even better, if we had teachers out there who modelled all sorts of diversity, so that students could see and experience for themselves that actually, we ARE just ordinary people, and in many cases, our Deafness or disability is not even the most remarkable thing about us.

I do teach a lecture on this at Melbourne Uni, and I love it because I know that those students, who will shortly be teachers, will go out into the world ready to respond more appropriately if they meet a Deaf person, or a Deaf student walks into their classroom. But we need more than this. We need this stuff to be taught to everyone. It doesn’t take long. One lesson is enough to get the Joes of the world thinking so that they are ready when a Deaf person enters their shop.

Learn Auslan – People

Here are some signs you can use to refer to the people in your life:

Vocab:

• Woman
• Man
• Boy
• Girl
• Mother (MM)
• Father (FF)
• Mum/mummy
• Brother
• Sister
• Friend
• Son (same as the sign for ‘boy’)
• Daughter (DD)
• Children (sign little, then pat the top of each child. For child, just one pat. For three children, do three pats.)
• Adult (literally translates as ‘head high’)

Lipreading is not about ‘reading’ the shape of the lips

There’s a misconception that lipreading is just like reading a book. You look at the mouth and read, right?

But no, it’s far, far more complicated than that. I have to queue up words in my mind, invent possibilities that fit the facial expression, body language, approximate number of syllables etc etc. Sometimes there are a couple of possibilities, and I hold both in my mind simultaneously, waiting for it to become clear. While I’m doing this, collecting possibilities and sifting through them all, I need to keep the conversation going. So I smile and nod and say ‘mmm,’ and ‘yep…’ as appropriate. If I don’t do that, the speaker stops, and we haven’t gotten anywhere.

Sometimes though, I get right to the end, and I realise that none of the possibilities work. The whole thing just doesn’t make sense. And then I have to say, ‘Sorry, can you go right back to the start?’

And you might wonder, well why were you nodding and smiling and saying yes all along when I didn’t understand. But that’s because it’s how lipreading works. It’s not a lie. It’s the only practical way to do it.

It can take a whole minute or two after the speaker finishes, that it suddenly comes to me what was said.

As you can imagine, this is incredibly hard work. I have an hour of lipreading in me a day, tops. After that, fatigue sets in. And if I go too far, pushing myself for maybe 3 hours, I am WIPED afterwards, and my head pounds. It can literally take me days to recover.

This is why, even though I’m a pretty competent lipreader, I prefer other modes of conversation.

Learn Auslan – Feelings

Here are some signs that describe emotions:

Vocab:

• Feel / feelings
• Like
• Don’t like (this is the sign for like but with your facial expression you show the opposite)
• Happy
• Sad
• Cranky/bad mood
• Cry
• Confused
• Angry
• Enjoy
• Smile
• Love
• Hate
• Fun/funny
• Laugh
• Bored (for the handshape, touch forefinger and thumb together to make a ring)
• Pissed off (same handshape as ‘bored’)

In Auslan, facial expression is very important. A conversation cannot be understood by watching the hands alone. You will see in the video my face changes with every sign. When you are using these signs in conversation, your face needs to show the emotion for the signs to make sense.

In fact, the facial expression can inform the meaning of the sign. The sign LIKE is used for both LIKE and DON’T-LIKE, depending on your facial expression.

It can be difficult for English-speakers to loosen up and learn to use appropriate facial expressions in Auslan – it can feel very over-the-top. However, for Auslan signers, it can seem bizarre that an English-speaking newsreader on television will describe terrible events using a perfectly bland face.

Practise signing the above vocab, using appropriate facial expressions.

Tip to include Deaf people…

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Let me tell you a little story about my own experiences…

Back when I was in a community circus troupe, we would do warm up exercises before every show. They were designed to help us connect as a group, as well as help us prepare physically for the show.

However, many of the games were difficult for me. Such as when we had to walk around the space, and the director would call out a number. We’d have to form groups of that number of people. Anyone who didn’t make it to a group was out. No prizes for guessing I was out first time, every time. Eventually I asked the director if we could change the game a little: maybe instead of yelling out a number, she could stamp her foot on the floor, and then hold up the appropriate number of fingers on her hand. That way, I figured, no-one would be at a disadvantage. It surely wouldn’t be a problem for the hearing people to play by these rules.

But she wasn’t up for that. Instead she arranged another student to walk beside me, and tell me the number when she called it out. In practise, that meant the other student quickly hauled me into a group of an appropriate number, because there wasn’t time for her to communicate it and still get into a group herself. I ended up feeling ‘special’, having to walk with my ‘aid’, and I was a bit embarrassed that it meant she couldn’t play properly either.

In the end, the warm up games became so awkward that I extricated myself and did my own private warm up. It meant that I missed out on the connection with others in the group. But I was more comfortable with that than with the solutions the director came up with. I felt lucky that a couple of other students joined me in my private warm up, as a protest against my lack of inclusion.

I think the reason the director was unable to change her game was because she had established her way of working and she knew it worked, and didn’t want to mess with it. I get that.

But my challenge to you, when you are in a position that involves thinking about including others, is to be prepared to shake things up, in order to accommodate everyone. Surely there’s some way you can set up a group culture, game, experience, outting, in such a way that everyone can participate and no-one needs to feel weird or left out. If you have people with conflicting needs, that’s going to take some creativity. Maybe you split the group into two and have two slightly different activities running at the same time. This doesn’t just apply to teachers and directors. It applies to everyone – to kids playing games with other kids, to organising a celebration dinner..

Whatever, I ask you, be creative, try something new, think outside the box, and make sure EVERYONE can join in.

If you’d like to do your bit to help raise awareness, feel free to share this post. Thanks!

Learn Auslan – Food

Here are some signs about food:

Vocab:

Breakfast (this is like eating a bowl of cereal with a spoon – I should have just fed myself two spoonful in the video, not three)
Lunch (this is like eating a sandwich)
Dinner
Dessert (this sign is also used for ‘pudding’ and ‘porridge’ and sometimes for ‘breakfast’ too)
Hungry (note: in some states this sign means ‘sexy’! this is the Melbourne version)
Thirsty
Tea
Coffee (I should have done just two shakes of the ‘c’ in the video)
Sugar
Honey

Note: you already learnt the words for food and drink in the lesson for baby signs. The sign for ‘eat’ is the same as the sign for food.

Interview with Asphyxia by Ange and Kate

A little while ago, some Auslan students asked if they could make a video about me and my life, for a school assignment. Here it is – a lil guided tour of my home, my art studio, my journals, and my life as both a Deaf person and an artist. Have a look if you fancy. I think Angelique and Kate did a great job. And thanks to Paula who did a voice-over for those of you who can’t sign.

I’ve posted a lot about Deafness, and the need for there to be better education about what it means to be Deaf. Over 11,000 people have signed up for my free online Auslan course. Clearly, people are interested in learning this. Over and over again, people have said to me: ‘If only Auslan was taught in schools.’

Here’s a way you can help to make it happen… Telstra and an organisation called Junkee have teamed up together and are offering big buckets of money to realise the visions of young and bright Australians such as Drisana Levitzke-Gray, the young Australian of the year who is also Deaf.

Drisana’s pitch to Telstra and Junkee is to make Auslan a mainstream language. If she wins, she’ll get heaps of money and resources to make it happen.

So, let’s do it. Vote for Drisana and get Auslan out there. Can you please share this post, so that all those of you who were interested in learning Auslan have the chance to vote. Then hopefully one day it won’t just be me offering free courses, but they’ll come from the government and be included in our school curriculum.

And in the meantime, if you want to learn Auslan, you can sign up here.

Learn Auslan – Food

Here are some more signs about food:

Vocab:

• Bread
• Milk
• Cheese
• Fruit
• Vegetables (fingerspell VEG)
• Meat
• Fish
• Egg
• Butter

‘Vegetables’ is one of those signs that is routinely fingerspelled, albeit in a shortened version: VEG.

The sign I showed you for ‘egg’ refers to cracking the top off a boiled egg with a spoon. It’s also often used for raw egg, though technically that’s incorrect (people don’t use a spoon to take the top off a raw egg!) – for that reason, many people will fingerspell ‘egg’ if they are talking about a raw egg. There are different signs for scrambled egg and fried egg, which mime the cooking process.

Learn Auslan – Making sense, visually

Auslan is a language that needs to make sense, visually. In the last lesson, ‘egg’ is an example of a sign that is altered depending on context, in order to make sense, visually.

Auslan signs tend to be based on what things look like, rather than how they sound. In English, some words have multiple meanings, such as the word “cross”. It can refer to the shape of a cross, to feeling cross, to crossing the road. Each of these contexts is signed differently in Auslan.

Consider the following words in different contexts:

Train (can mean to practise, or to catch a train)
Seesaw (you need to show this visually – don’t sign the word for ‘see’ followed by ‘saw’/’see in-the-past’)
Park (this can be a playground or a place to park your car)
Can of drink (don’t sign the word ‘can’ (the opposite of ‘can’t’) – instead use the specific sign for soft drink)
Wake up (with this, you show your eyes opening – there is no need to add the sign for ‘up’)

When you are signing, stop regularly and ask yourself if your signs make sense, visually. A lot of English words and phrases don’t make sense visually, and they need to be altered when you are signing.

Jokes in English that are funny because of a play on words often don’t make sense in Auslan. Jokes in Auslan often rely on visual ideas and facial expression to convey humour.

Please don’t define us

My friend Anna recently studied her grad dip to become a teacher, and while all the other students in her course were granted their teaching licenses, she was required to present herself to the board. “Since you’re Deaf,” they said, “We think we should give you a restricted licence – so that you can only teach in schools with Deaf students.”
Knowing Anna as I do, this OUTRAGED me. To think that she was seen as only having value to Deaf students, but not to hearing students. Aside from being a terrific model for diversity, Anna is funny, smart, compassionate and highly entertaining. If I was a hearing student, I would learn bucketloads from having her for a teacher. And one of the main things I’d learn is that Anna’s Deafness is not her main talent. No – it’s her incredible wit and ability to hit the nail on the head, which would make learning fun and easy. But I’d also learn that Deaf people can be more than their label.

Learn Auslan – Food

Here are some more signs about food:

Vocab:

• Sandwich
• Pasta
• Apple
• Banana
• Onion
• Garlic
• Tomato
• Potato
• Carrot

Learn Auslan – Colours

Learn how to sign the colours:

Vocab:

• Red
• Blue (sorry, I hesitated after this sign, I was going to sign ‘green’ – my hand movements there are not a proper sign!)
• Yellow
• Green
• Orange (this is also the sign for the fruit, ‘orange’)
• Purple
• Pink
• Black
• White
• Grey
• Gold
• Silver

Learn Auslan – Creative life

Here are some signs about living creatively:

Vocab:

• Art
• Design
• Idea
• Make
• Paper
• Pen
• Pencil
• Draw/paint
• Papier mache
• Sew (by hand)
• Sew (with a machine)
• Knit (this is the letter ‘F’, rubbed together. I should have actually rubbed only twice, not several times.)
• Story
• Book (I should have signed this with just two openings of the book, not three)

Learn Auslan – Shopping

Here are some signs that will be helpful when you go shopping:

Vocab:

• Shop
• Money
• Dollar
• Cent
• Buy
• Sell
• Spend
• Cost/price (this is also the sign for ‘how much’)
• Cheap
• Expensive (sign for money, then the sign for pain!)

Learn Auslan – Times

Here are some signs about time:

Vocab:

• Time (this is the formal sign for time, like hands moving on a clock face)
• Time (sometimes Time is signed like this – think of pointing to a watch)
• Today/now (use the same sign for both words)
• Tomorrow
• Yesterday
• Day (like the sun coming up)
• Night (like the sun going down)
• Morning
• Tonight (today night – the sign used for ‘night’ here (fingers around the nose) is another common sign for ‘night’ and is often used for that word, especially in a context where you want to sign small, rather than doing big hand movements. For example, if you are tucked up in bed at night, saying good night to your partner, that’s the night to use.)
• Noon
• Afternoon (noon after)
• Later
• Soon
• Sometimes (in the video I did a few too many lifts of my hand – two movements would have been more correct – i.e. my right hand should go up and then down)

Since I’m heading offline for the rest of December and January, I’ll set up the next few Auslan lessons to be posted automatically. So you can check back here for your lessons as usual. For those of you who subscribe to my course, I won’t be sending any notifications via email while I’m gone. Just check back here each Monday and you’ll find your lesson.

Learn Auslan – Time – more signs

Here are some more signs about time:

Vocab:

• Week (W down)
• Month (M forward)
• Year (Y down)
• Next week
• In two weeks
• In three weeks (you see the pattern here – this can go on up to 9 weeks!)
• Last week
• Two weeks ago
• Three weeks ago (you see the pattern here too.)
• Before
• After
• Early (the same sign as after)
• Late
• Too late
• Half hour
• Still

It’s time for Open Captions – real access to movies for Deaf people

Last week I went to see the movie Carol at Westgarth Cinema. My partner and I checked beforehand, three times, that closed captions would be available for this movie. But when we arrived, we were told they weren’t. This mightn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s the story of my life. I’ve been trying to see a captioned movie at Westgarth Cinema for over a year now. I’ve made multiple attempts to see closed captioned movies at the Nova in Carlton too. And at the Jam Factory in South Yarra. Over and over I have been sent home without seeing my movie, despite ringing ahead to confirm that captions would be available.

It’s hard to describe the despair that comes over me when I’ve gone to the trouble of looking up movie times, calling the cinema through the relay service (usually more than once), invited others to attend with me, set aside the evening, arranged babysitting for my son, said no to other things I’ve been invited to, gotten dressed nicely, and travelled to the theatre. Only to be told I can’t see the movie. Then the people who have come with me have the really awkward decision to make of whether to abandon the movie out of solidarity with me, or whether to fulfil their night and watch it without me. Usually they choose to stick with me, and then I feel bad that they have been let down by this as well as me. Next we have to decide what to do. Do we just go home again? It’s horrible, just horrible, and leaves me in tears every time.

It’s not just me. When I posted about this on Facebook, there was an outpouring of frustration from other Deaf and hard of hearing people who have had similar experiences. Alice Ewing, who is also Deaf, told me she has been working on this issue with Westgarth Cinema for more than two years now, but has had no progress.

You might like to watch this video of a CaptiView experience. My experiences have all been like this.

So, what’s the problem? Why can’t Deaf people access movies?

Six years ago, the then big four cinema chains in Australia applied for an exemption from the Disability Discrimination Act. Charming, huh? Luckily, they were not successful, thanks to a group called Action On Cinema Access, which partnered with Arts Access Victoria. The court ruled that the federal government would have to make a Cinema Access Implementation Plan. Unfortunately, the community consultation process for this was largely missed, with just one tokenistic demonstration in May 2010, and no consultation with targeted audiences or real trial of the ‘new technology’ before it was rolled out. The outcome was that to provide deaf access, the big four cinema chains installed new digital technology – CaptiView, a device that would provide captions only to the people using them, but not to everyone else in the cinema.

The CaptiView system has been an abject failure. A 2013 survey of the deaf community who had used it did not reveal a single satisfied customer.

Here are some of the problems associated with the CaptiView system:

Staff often do not know how to use the device.
The device is sometimes not charged up and ready for use.
Staff are often confused about which movies the device can be used with and give erroneous advice.
The device often misses captions.
The device often doesn’t work, or is off-site being repaired, and staff often don’t realise this.
Children are unable to use the device.
The device goes in the drink-holder of the user’s seat, which means there’s nowhere for the user to put their drink.
The device extends on a flexible arm from the drink holder, and often sags – it is difficult to position it ‘just so’, allowing the viewer to see the captions and the movie.
One the device has been positioned, the users quickly learn not to bump it. As a result they have to sit rigidly in a single position for the entire movie, resulting in a stiff neck, sore back and headaches.
The user needs to focus their eyes back and forwards between the device (close) and the screen (far) resulting in sore, tired eyes and headaches.
It is difficult for the user to snuggle with their partner while watching the movie.
Some people feel embarrassed about revealing their hearing loss and refuse to use the device.
At times the device squeaks and creaks, embarrassing the user and annoying other movie-goers.
When the device doesn’t work (which is often), the user needs to fetch a member of staff, who then comes into the cinema and attempts to whisper to them in the dark, which is not an environment that facilitates good communication with people who have a hearing loss. It’s awkward and embarrassing and causes the user to miss parts of the movie.
The number of people who can view closed captions in a single movie session is limited by the number of devices the cinema can access.

Another problem with the system is that most cinemas do not advertise which movies/sessions have closed captions available, so someone who wishes to see a movie with closed captions generally needs to contact the cinema directly to ask, and then the information they receive is dependent on staff knowledge. Most staff don’t seem to be aware of access strategies and requirements, so give erroneous answers regarding the availability of closed captions for particular sessions.

In Hawaii this month, legislation was passed requiring all cinemas to screen at least three open captioned sessions per week, as they have recognised that the CaptiView system does not provide adequate access to movies.

Is there any alternative solution that would allow access to movies?

Yes. Open captions. Unlike CaptiView, which provides closed captions that are only visible to the person with the device, open captions are displayed on the screen, where everyone in the cinema can see them. You can think of open captions as being like the subtitles on a foreign film, but they have an additional component: descriptive information is included too. For example: ‘door slams’ or ‘suspenseful music’.

Deaf people and those with hearing loss seem to unanimously want open captions. Here’s why:

When a movie is advertised with open captions, the viewer can simply buy a ticket and attend the session. No special calls need to be made, no extra time allowed for staff to figure out the device, no counting of devices available and checking that everyone who needs one will have one. No-one needs to explain to the staff what the device is.
Screening a movie with open captions is a simple process that movie technicians are familiar with. They simply need to switch on the file. It’s a bit like watching a DVD and turning on the subtitles. As a result, when a movie is advertised as having open captions, the captions usually appear. Access does not depend on staff members knowing how to use a device.
Open captions are a comfortable experience for people who cannot hear the movie. They can snuggle with their partners and adjust their position as they wish throughout the movie. They can use their drink holders and don’t need to liaise with cinema staff during the movie. There is no eye-strain involved.
People can attend open captioned screenings without having to advertise their personal issues with hearing or understanding spoken language.

Open captions are also often appreciated by people from non-English speaking backgrounds, people with Ushers (which causes vision issues as well as deafness), and those with autism and other cognitive dissonance disorders. They have said that captions make it easier for them to follow a movie.

What are the issues with providing open captions?

From a technical perspective, open captions are pretty straightforward. When a cinema screens a movie, they purchase what is known as a Digital Cinema Package (DCP) for that movie. The package comes with separate files for various components of the movie, such as the visual track, the auditory track (sometimes more than one, if the movie is offered dubbed in multiple languages), the trailer, and, often, open or closed caption files. At the time of screening the movie, the technician selects the appropriate files and plays them.

Some movies are provided with closed caption files but not open caption files. Some come with neither. Closed captions can be switched on and used as open captions, though sometimes the formatting is not optimal for a widescreen – for instance, the lines may be a bit shorter than ideal. In most cases, if the cinema requests open or closed caption files, the distributor can make them available. They don’t cost extra – they are simply a part of the package. For the movieCarol, which I attempted to see last week, caption files are available in the USA, but it seems the package was distributed in Australia without them. Had the cinema requested the file, likely it could have been provided.

The biggest impediment seems to be a lack of understanding by cinemas about the importance of screening open captioned movies. Perhaps they have invested in the strategies outlined by the Cinema Access Implementation Plan, and feel that the job is done and that they can tick off ‘providing access’.

There is also a social stigma associated with open captions – there is a belief that hearing people do not like them and won’t go to see a movie if it is screened with open captions. It may be that cinemas are afraid to attempt open captioned screenings of movies in case it reduces attendance and impacts their bottom line.

While it is true that open captions can be annoying for some people, there are many hearing people who have no issues at all with open captions. With practise, most people can learn to ignore them if they wish. Providing access can be inconvenient to those who don’t need it – for example, it costs more to build a wheelchair accessible bathroom than one that doesn’t accommodate wheelchairs. But we still have legislation that requires new buildings to accommodate those who use wheelchairs, because everyone deserves access, regardless of their level of mobility. It is the same for Deaf and hard of hearing people. We, too, have the right to access, even if it is inconvenient to some. Perhaps special screenings could be arranged for those who object to open captioned movies?

Is it really a big deal? Can’t deaf people just wait until the movie comes out on DVD?

Actually, it is a big deal. First, let’s look at the numbers. 1 in 6 Australians experiences hearing loss. With an ageing population, this figure is set to increase to 1 in 4 by 2050, and we also have the advent of the ‘iPod’ generation. Now is an excellent time to work on access for this large proportion of our society. These figures do not include the other groups mentioned above who also benefit from open captions. Because deafness is not a visible condition, and many people with a hearing loss do not advertise their difficulty in hearing, there is a general under-awareness about the level of deafness in Australia. So, we’re not talking about access for a small minority of people. We are talking about access for a sizeable chunk of our population.

Going to the movies is a popular, important leisure experience for Australians. While it is inexpensive to hire a DVD or watched a movie streamed on the internet, people enjoy going to the cinema and are prepared to pay extra and go to the trouble of leaving their homes because the experience is so enticing. It can be social to share a movie with friends. It can be romantic to invite someone to a movie on a date. Box office movies are often the topic of conversation, much discussed.

Deaf and hard of hearing people want to participate in all of this. We are hard-working citizens who pay our taxes and like to unwind at the end of the week, just like everyone else. We want to chat with our friends about the current movies, not watch them later when no-one is talking about them any more.

It is not just the Deaf and hard of hearing people who miss out, but their friends and family too. It is a great source of frustration to my partner and son that they cannot go to the movies with me. Both of them love going to the movies, and it breaks their hearts to leave me at home knowing they’re off to see a movie I’m itching to see. Then when it comes out on DVD, they’ve already seen it, and I have to watch it alone.

Because of the extent to which deafness is ignored in our society, systems are not designed with us in mind. Train stations have aural information about the timing of the next train, but often skip the visual that would allow us access. Courses are designed without access in mind, and when we want to attend, it’s a struggle for us to convince educators to accommodate us. Conferences and festivals are routinely held without a thought to our access. When you consider the vast number of systems in our society that force deaf and hard of hearing people to miss out, movies are the last straw. We are tired of missing out.

The very articulate Karen McQuigg wrote an article about whether or not we should, as a society, be attempting to include deaf people. It was published in The Age here.Our government does claim that we should, but the attitudes of even liberal-minded people often get in the way.

It would be so straightforward, so simple and easy, so inexpensive, to switch on those open caption files, and include us. We deserve access, just like everyone else.

Surely if you ask nicely, the cinemas will provide open captions?

We’ve been trying for some years now, but action has been slow. Here’s a conversation Alice Ewing had with Rennie from Westgarth Cinema, back in 2013. The conversation was conducted through the relay service, so Alice has a word-for-word record of it. I’m including it here because it highlights the typical confusion and bias surrounding the issue of providing access for deaf people.

Alice: Hello Renni, my name is Alice Ewing, and I am wondering how the Westgarth Cinema is able to provide access for people who are deaf?

Rennie: We do have a hearing loop and we do have some braille on the toilet doors. That’s about it really.

Alice: I’m talking about people who are deaf, not blind!

Rennie: Oh yeah, sorry, I just got confused. Interesting question… we don’t do the hearing impaired subtitles at all. And none of us that work here can sign.

Alice: Why not show captions, if you don’t mind me asking, please?

Rennie: We’re a smaller cinema. We only have three screens, so we just really can’t afford to show the captioned films.

Alice: Maybe you don’t know, but it does not cost a cent more to show captions on screen, as it is part of the movie rental. I would be more than happy to talk to you about this, as it has become apparent that the closed caption files, which some of the larger cinemas use through CaptiView units, can also be projected onscreen, by switching it on through the software.

Rennie: I’m well aware of being able to play open captioned films. I’m also an AV tech. It’s more [that] the English subtitles display at the bottom of the screen puts off a lot of customers. I’ve worked here for six years and this is the second time I’ve had a conversation about captions, and to me that reflects the demand on open captions and the [level of] interest. I can put that forward to my boss and the programmers, but I’m not the person who’s in charge of what content we show.

Alice: I was thinking it would be ideal to have a system where (and when) a deaf person wants to see a film, that the captions could be shown on request for that particular screening, or by arrangement, rather than having to schedule open-captioned screenings regularly with the risk that no deaf people may actually be present. I would certainly like to follow this up, as there is a demand, rather a big demand, for open captions, as the CaptiView units are not doing the job effectively, nor do they provide an enjoyable experience for the majority of deaf patrons. I would also like to highlight here that open captions not only benefit those who are deaf, but those learning English as an additional language, or those with other disabilities such as autism or learning disabilities. Certainly, it has been shown that children cannot access the captions through CaptiView, and it has effectively made cinemas inaccessible for deaf children since the open caption screenings were phased out three years ago.

Rennie: As I said before, I’m not the one to be talking to about this. I’m interested to hear what you say but I have no power to act on it myself.

(They go on to exchange email addresses and Rennie promises to refer this to someone who has the relevant power.) It is interesting to note that Rennie assumes customers will reject open captions, despite having had only two conversations on that topic in six years. His comment also highlights the need for people who care to make their desire for open captions known to cinemas.

Fast forward to February 2015, and Alice was still at it with Westgarth. From Westgarth Palace Manager, Alex Castro, she received an email that said, ‘As I mentioned on the phone, I have put forward the concept of regular OC screenings here at Westgarth. I will contact you once I have more information.’ However, despite repeated requests from Alice, Alex never got back to her.

Fast forward another year, to January 2016, and I received an email from Palace Cinemas in response to my request for open captions at Westgarth that said, ‘we have passed on your feedback to senior management regarding requests for open caption sessions.’

Really? What will it take? Do we expect a reply from ‘senior management’ this time?

What can you do about it?

Thanks to a swell of interest and outrage on Facebook, this issue is now capturing the attention of the media. Perhaps now we can go with the momentum and make 2016 the year that deaf people get to go to the movies regularly at last. Maybe this is the year that ’senior management’ will respond to our request. I personally believe that by asking one independent local cinema to trial screening open captions could result in others cinemas following their lead. The top down approach hasn’t worked. Let’s try going from the bottom up instead.

If you care, here are some things you can do to help make it happen:

Write an email.

The kinds of things you could say in your email include:

that 1 in 6 Australians experiences hearing loss and deserve to watch movies too
people from multicultural backgrounds also enjoy captions
your personal experiences with being denied access to movies
your wish to be able to attend movies with people who currently can’t access them
your personal experiences with the CaptiView closed caption system
a request for open captioned movies, for example, a regular night a week where all movie sessions are captioned, or two sessions per week of open captioned movies as is now the legislation in Hawaii
if you are hearing and don’t require open captions, you could mention this and that you would be perfectly happy watching movies with open captions, knowing that the deaf people in our community could access them too. (If you only do one thing, send a one-liner saying this!)
include a link to this blog post, which explains the issues involved

Send your email to:

westgarth@palacecinemas.com.au
feedback@palacecinemas.com.au
your local cinema
your local paper. If you’re in Northcote, that’s northcote@leadernewspapers.com.au
any journalists you know who might be interested in this story
your local MP. If you’re in Northcote, that’s fiona.richardson@parliament.vic.gov.au
anyone else you know who may have some sway to build momentum on this issue – bloggers, politicians, people who work in the media, cinemas etc.

Post your email on Facebook, including a link to this blog post and a suggestion that others might like to write emails too.

If writing an email is too much for you, you could simply share this post on Facebook. That would help to spread the word.

If we don’t get action this way, I’m thinking about a sit-in at the cinema. If you’re interested in joining us, I can send you an email. Sign up for my email list here:

http://eepurl.com/Jqz9z

(This newsletter is about Deaf activism, art and creative stuff – if it’s not your cup of tea you can unsubscribe after the sit-in. I promise not to do anything untoward with your email address.)

Thanks folks,

http://www.asphyxia.com.au

Should cinemas offer open captions?

Look! Our push for open captions is in the Herald Sun newspaper! Let’s hope it raises some awareness about deaf access to movies. Palace Cinema claims they ran open captioned sessions in the past, but we didn’t know about them. How were they promoted? When were they? Did they really happen? Hmmm… Good news is we have meeting with MP Jenny Macklin on Thursday to discuss this issue. Let’s hope we see some action soon. And if you want to help, contact Palace and tell them you’d be happy to go to movies with open captions, even if you are hearing.

You can read this article here

Learn Auslan – Numbers

Here I show you how to count in Auslan and some ways to use numbers effectively:

Vocab:

• 1-10
• 11-20
• 21 (most double digit numbers are structured like this)
• 22, 33, 44 (except where both digits are the same, in which case they are signed like this)
• 100
• 1 thousand
• 1 million (1 M)
• how old
• 6 years old, 7 years old (all ages are signed from the nose)
• 6 o’clock, 7 o’clock (all hours of the clock are signed from the pointer finger of the opposite hand)

Learn Auslan – Learning

These signs relate to study:

Vocab:

• School
• Teacher (my thumb and pointer finger make an L shape here.)
• Teach
• Study (in the video, two circular movements of my hand would have been enough.)
• Class
• Student
• Read
• Write (in the video I should have just written two lines on my hand, not three)
• Learn (again, two rubs of my fingers would be the correct sign for learn)
• Remember
• Forget
• Practise
• Think
• Know
• Don’t know
• Understand
• Work

Learn Auslan – Hygiene

Here are some signs relating to hygiene:

Vocab:

• Water
• Clean
• Dirty
• Do the dishes
• Shower
• Bath
• Sweep
• Stink
• Wash

Learn Auslan – Around the house

Some signs you might use around the house:

Vocab:

• House
• Home
• Door
• Window
• Bed
• Floor
• Table
• Chair
• Kitchen (KK)
• Room
• Light (this is for an electric light)
• Phone
• Mobile phone

Learn Auslan – Fingerspelling patterns

For this lesson, read the text before you watch the video!

People learning to fingerspell usually read one letter at a time, and at the end of each word they try to mentally put the letters together to understand the word. However, when reading they will be able to glance at a word on the page and know it from the shape – there is no need to read it letter by letter.

Reading fingerspelling can be the same. Rather than concentrating on each individual letter, concentrate on the handshape the word makes. Notice the first letter, the last letter, one or two key letters in the middle of the word, the approximate length of the word, then use this information to work out what the word is. Context is very important, so factor in what you are talking about. A long word that is fingerspelled will often be spelled slowly the first time in conversation, and then for the remainder of the conversation, signed very fast. Think about what you are talking about and what the word could possibly be.

Try fingerspelling your name, looking for patterns and handshapes. Try finding patterns for these words:

• Cream
• Program
• Out
• How
• Rice
• Bus

Now watch the video – I sign these words, showing you the rhythm I use that adds flow to the word. Many words that are routinely fingerspelled have a particular flow and shape that makes them easy to identify, even if you can’t distinguish each letter. You learn those flow-shapes, just as you learn specific signs.

Learn Auslan – Name signs

Name signs work very differently from given names in English. While parents think long and hard about their choice of English name for their child, name signs are not chosen the same way. It is actually considered inappropriate to sit down and make up a name sign for a person. Instead, name signs need to happen or evolve naturally.

Let me tell you the story of my name sign. My English name is Asphyxia. It’s actually a medical word which means ‘suffocation’. I know – that’s not a very positive meaning for a name. How I got the name Asphyxia is another story, and it actually has a positive meaning for me. Anyway, when I was eighteen and learning Auslan for the first time, my teacher, Robert Adam, used to call the roll. He’d go around the class, fingerspelling each person’s name. However, when he got to me, he could never fingerspell my name – too long, too many confusing letters. So instead, for me, he’d do the sign ‘choke’. That stuck, and now it’s my name sign.

A name sign can only be given by a Deaf person. It is not appropriate for hearing people to make up name signs. If you don’t have a name sign, please fingerspell your name in full. Perhaps down the track, a Deaf person will give you a name sign. But it is not appropriate to ask or to try to make it happen.

Name signs are often based on a characteristic of a person. I know of a woman whose sign is based on the word ‘girl’ and ’11’ – because she was the girl in room 11 at her Deaf boarding school. Name signs can refer to curly hair, nose rings, glasses or even birthmarks. Often, there’s an element of teasing in a name sign: I know two people whose name signs are based on the word ‘careless’. Using a person’s initials is also a very common name sign

Learn Auslan – Depicting Signs

Depicting signs are a linguistic concept that are not used in English. Other foreign languages use them, however, a foreign language which lacks a word for oven may use depicting words to describe it: “The hot box with the door in front.”

Auslan uses depicting signs frequently. They are known as CL (fingerspelled) for short. There are two types of depicting signs – proform and descriptive.

Descriptive depicting signs use the hands and face to show what things look like. Try signing:

• Various objects around the room
• A dog
• A man you know
• A pattern

Try drawing on paper shapes that are described in the air. Think about showing proportion and distance, by leaving one hand to show the location of the last element you described.

(Sorry, there’s no video yet to show descriptive depicting signs. I hope to make one later.)

Proform depicting signs are used for people, animals and vehicles. Unlike descriptive depicting signs, they are predefined and must be learnt like vocab. They are used to show how people, animals and vehicles interact with each other and the world around them. In this video, I show you the depicting signs for people, animals and vehicles:

Proform depicting signs:

• Person (the area of your pointer finger from which you would take a fingerprint is considered the face of the person, and the fingernail area is considered to be the back of the head. In this video the person is facing sideways.)
• Animal (the finger tip is considered to be the head of the animal).
• Vehicle (car, truck, bike, motorbike. Again, the fingertips represent the front of the vehicle.)

I also show you how you might use these depicting signs to depict:

• A car crash (sorry, my signing here is a bit fractured)
• A woman walking her dog (you can see by my facial expression that the dog wasn’t meant to run ahead!)
• A motorbike stopping suddenly
• Two people meeting

When a depicting sign is used, it is important to identify what you are talking about first. You can’t hold up one finger and have the other person assume it is a person – you must first say who the person is.

Practise signing with proform and descriptive depicting signs, to show:

• two animals playing together
• two people talking and someone going off in a huff
• two cars racing, one sometimes getting ahead, and then the other

Learn Auslan – Space

The use of space is very important in Auslan. The key point to using space effectively, is to remember where you put things, and leave them there. Famous mime artists, when playing with an imaginary mouse, will always put the mouse back in their pocket when they have finished – they never let go of it mid-air. In Auslan the same concept is applied with space.

In conversation, when talking about a person who is not present, locate them somewhere in space, identify them, and from then on point to that location when referring to them. You need only say the person’s name once, when first identifying them. Replace the use of “he”, “she” with pointing to the location where you have placed that person. Be very careful that you leave the person in one spot. If you begin talking about another person, locate them somewhere else, to avoid confusion, and remember to point to the correct location.

Space is also important when describing physical layout. Practise describing

• The layout of your kitchen
• The layout of your house
• The layout of this room and the people in it
• A dinner plate of different food, showing where and how much of each item is on the plate.

Transposition: space is to be described according to how YOU (the signer) see things. The other person must transpose the image to visualize it correctly.

Try drawing on paper the position of hills and a farmhouse on a landscape, according to how someone has described it for you.

(Sorry, there’s no video yet to show signs describing objects and their arrangement in space. I hope to make one later.)

Will you help make Auslan available to everyone?

People, we are getting to the end of the lessons I originally created for this course. I’m so stunned and overwhelmed by the response to it. What started as a few quick videos to help a friend learn Auslan has turned into an epic project with over 11,000 students registered on Facebook and a good many of them signed up for the email version. Wow! Thanks for participating, and thanks for learning my language.

I’m now thinking about the future. There’s heaps more I can add to this course. Lots of signs I can teach, more tidbits of Deaf culture and insights into Deafness I can share.

It’s taken me a lot of time to run this course, to develop the content, post it every week in multiple places, and respond to all your questions. It’s been great, I’ve loved it, and I’ve been happy to do it for free. I’ve also spent my own money to create this course, paying for technical assistance, video subtitling, web help and more. Many of you receive email notifications about each lesson – unfortunately with so many students, mailing list platforms want to charge me a premium, and I’ve done a mix of paying up and finding time consuming work-arounds.

My question to you is, would you consider chipping in some money for this course? If you have enjoyed it, learnt something, benefited from it, or shared it with your people, then perhaps you can make a payment appropriate to what you feel it’s worth and what you’ve gotten out of it. Maybe you’d also consider contributing even if you aren’t a student – a way to help make Auslan accessible to everyone, and our society more accessible for Deaf people. Think about what you’d pay to attend a live course of a similar quality and content. VicDeaf charges $235 for their six week live course. I’m not saying you should pay that to me. Pay what you can afford and what you feel it’s worth.

I will use your donation to pay myself for my time, to cover the costs I’ve incurred out of my own pocket, and also to expand the course. I’ll add lessons, make it bigger and better and more accessible. I’ll be able to accommodate requests such as making the videos slower. Depending on how much money I end up with, I may even take it further and create something like a dedicated web page or ebook for the course. Your dollars will be well spent, people, I promise!

What do you reckon? If you’re happy to make a contribution, click here.

When you make your payment, feel free to tell me your thoughts about how the course has been for you.

Thanks so much folks.
Yours in appreciation!
Asphyxia-signature

Learn Auslan – Asking questions

In Auslan, there are three types of questions that are asked.

• Yes/No questions – “Are you a teacher?”
• Information questions – “Where do you live?”
• Rhetorical questions – to break up information.

There are rules for the manner in which the questions are asked.

Yes/No Questions:

• Body leans forward
• Eyebrows are raised
• Eyes opened wide

Information Questions:

• Body leans back
• Eyebrows are low
• Eyes squint

Rhetorical Questions:

These are usually used when a speaker is giving a long block of information. It breaks it up and becomes easier to follow. In this situation the speaker asks a question and then answers it themselves immediately. There are no rules for facial expression and body position when using rhetorical questions.

In the video, I give an example of each type of question:

• Yes/No questions – “Are you a teacher?” (TEACHER YOU?)
• Information questions – “Where do you live?” (YOU LIVE WHERE?)
• Rhetorical questions – to break up information. (I LOVE SWIMMING WHY? TO BECOME STRONG AND FIT – GOOD) In this example I should really have signed ‘SWIMMING I LOVE’ because the topic is supposed to go first.

Providing access, real access, is a tricky thing

Providing access, real access, for people who are Deaf or have a disability, can be a complicated thing. How to do it in such a way that doesn’t actually create more trouble or pressure for the person involved? How to make it actually WORK? Usually, when someone attempts to provide access, but the whole thing fails miserably, I give them a pat on the back and thank them, because I know they tried and I appreciate that. But recently I’ve come to think that actually, it would be better if I ever so kindly explained why it didn’t work. Why should I do this? Because then, next time, maybe there’s a chance that the access attempt will actually work.

This feels awkward. I hate to point out the failings of others, especially when I know they have tried. But Stella Young taught me how important it was to do this. If you don’t know who Stella Young is – Google her.. she rocks! And she wrote much, much better than I do, about this stuff. But since she’s dead, I’m trying in my somewhat pathetic way to carry on her flame. This one’s in her memory.

A thoughtful invitation

A while ago I received an email from a performer who was bringing her show to Melbourne. She was thinking of organising Auslan interpreters for the show, and wondered if I would be interested in coming.

I was touched by her thoughtfulness. This is an independent artist who wouldn’t be making much money, and yet she was happy to add what would be a significant expense to her budget, in order to make it an inclusive event. I was impressed. Of course I’d go.

Things were a little awkward

But on the night, things were a little awkward. I was the only Deaf person in the audience, so the interpreter was interpreting just for me. She was an old friend, actually.

When the show opened, I realised I couldn’t actually follow it, even with the interpreter. For a start, it was a physical theatre show, and the position of the reserved seating for the one and only Deaf audience member was such that I couldn’t easily see both the interpreter and the performer. There was a LOT of text, so the interpreter was going hard. I couldn’t really afford to look away or I’d miss too much to follow it.

But even while concentrating hard on the interpreter, and missing a lot of the physical action, the show didn’t seem to make sense. Paula nudged me and told me it was rather abstract content. The interpreter had told me that she’d only been booked a couple of days before – she’d had no opportunity to prepare. Without the time to mull over the content of the show and think about the best way to present it in Auslan, the interpreter was stuck too. She was making the best of a difficult situation.

But even the best really wasn’t enough. To be honest, I couldn’t make head or tail of it. I tried screening out the interpreter and just watching the physical action. But that felt rude, really rude. I mean, I was the only Deaf person there, and she was an old friend! I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by ignoring her.

With all this pressure on me, I started to feel upset

The longer I sat there though, with nothing making sense at all, the more frustrated and upset I began to feel. In fact, what I really, really wanted to do, was get up and walk out. I so did not want to be in this position. But, as the only Deaf audience member, where would that leave the interpreter? She’d have to stand there interpreting to no-one! Awkward! Or would she stop, and that would announce to the whole audience that for some reason, the Deaf patron had walked out.

No, I couldn’t do it. I stayed. Instead, I bolted when the curtain went down. What to say to the lovely, thoughtful performer who had booked interpreters to make this event more accessible? Would I ask her if she had promoted it adequately to the Deaf community? (Which would have taken the pressure off me as the one-and-only-Deaf-audience-member.) Would I ask her why the interpreters had been booked at the last minute when she had been planning this for months? I think it wasn’t her fault – the venue was in charge of booking the interpreter, not her. And would I say to my dear old friend, ‘I like you so much, but I couldn’t understand a word you said? I know it’s not your fault…’

What to do about it?

This whole situation leaves me uncertain. Because on one hand I am deeply appreciative that people were prepared to be thoughtful, considerate, inclusive, and put money towards access. But on the other hand, the access provided was all wrong, and it wasn’t really access at all. It put me in a very uncomfortable, awkward position. One I would much rather avoid.

By saying nothing, trying to be appreciative, I’m not helping fix the problem. There’s a problem here. This is not the first time I’ve been in such a situation. In fact, situations like this are very familiar to me. There’s not enough awareness on the part of theatres about how to book interpreters for a show. There’s not enough awareness on the part of producers about how to market a show to the Deaf community, and set it up so that the audience can see both the interpreter and the performer.

So I’m writing this post, hoping to put a little something out there. Hoping that the people involved won’t be offended, if they read this. Hoping that we can all find more effective ways to access and inclusion that don’t add more pressure to the people they are a supposed to benefit.

Learn Auslan – Grammar

Read the text for this lesson, before you watch the video.

As I have already mentioned, in Auslan, the grammar and sentence structure is different from English. Now I want to go into this a little deeper and practise putting sentences together using correct Auslan grammar.

The topic is the first part of the sentence. “I’m going to the shop” becomes SHOP ME GO. The shop is the topic. Usually the verb is the last item.

If you use a time marker, (for example, ‘yesterday’) it goes first in the sentence, before the topic. The sentence ‘I went to the shop yesterday’ is signed ‘YESTERDAY SHOP ME GO.’

Try signing:

• I want a drink.
• Do you want to watch a movie?
• My father is very tall.
• Please pass me the salt.

If you don’t know the vocab for the above words, fingerspell them. AFTER you have tried signing them, watch the video and correct your signs:

Learn Auslan – Grammar for questions

Read the text for this lesson before you watch the video.

When asking a question, the “W-words” (who, what, where, when, why, how, how many, how old, how much) go last. Try signing:

• Where do you live?
• How much sugar do you want?
• How old is your sister?
• What is the time?
• Who did you go to the movie with yesterday?
• How many brothers and sisters do you have?
• When did you start learning Auslan?
• Why did you clean the house?

If you don’t know the vocab for the above words, fingerspell them. AFTER you have tried signing them with correct grammar, watch the video and correct yourself.

(Sorry, in the video, before asking how much sugar you want, I accidentally signed an extra ‘you’ – please disregard! Also in the question about who you went to the movie with yesterday, the subtitles miss the word ‘yesterday’.)

Green moon

In going through all my old home videos, I found this adorable clip of Jesse when he was about 15 months old. We used to lounge around in bed in the mornings, playing, chatting, teaching him to sign and more. Here you can see him learning to sign ‘Blue Moon’, led by Paula.

Some of the signing isn’t very clear, so here’s a run down of what’s being said:

Paula: Would you like to sing ‘Blue Moon’?
Jesse: (voice) green moon.
Paula interprets this for me, and tries again to convince him to do ‘Blue Moon’, but Jesse insists on calling it ‘Green Moon’.
Jesse starts signing ‘Green Moon’ but doesn’t know all the words, so Paula leads him through it:

Green moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own.

To everyone who has ever asked me why Paula and I homeschooled Jesse, it’s because it was often like this.

If you think this is cute, feel free to share it

Enjoy!

Learn Auslan – Tense

In Auslan, tense is not shown in the verb, the way it is often done in English. For example, in English ‘go’ is in present tense, and ‘went’ is the same word but in past tense. In Auslan, you would use the word ‘go’ for all tenses, and show the tense a different way.

Tense is often shown sufficiently with the use of words and phrases such as ‘yesterday,’ ‘this morning’, ‘before,’ ‘tomorrow night,’ ‘last year,’ ‘when I was growing up,’ ‘in the future,’ etc. When signing, if the tense is clear from the use of these words, there is no need to add further tense markers.

In the situation that tense is not clear, such as when someone signs SHOP ME GO, and if the tense has not yet been established in the the conversation, additional markers may be used. The sign FINISH is used to show past tense, and WILL to show future tense.

EG:

SHOP ME GO-FINISH

SHOP ME GO WILL

DINNER ME EAT-FINISH

Usually the grammar is to use the verb, and then the sign FINISH. However, FINISH need not be added to all the verbs. For example, “I have eaten dinner. I ate spaghetti with mushrooms.” would be signed, DINNER ME EAT-FINISH. EAT WHAT? SPAGHETTI/MUSHROOMS. There is no need to add FINISH to the second “eat”, because the tense has already been shown.

A word of warning: while you may say ‘SEE-FINISH’ if you have already seen a place or a thing, be careful of signing ‘SEE-FINISH’ if you are talking about a person. When you are talking about a person, ‘SEE-FINISH’ means that you have had sex with them!

You can also use the sign FINISH to ask and answer a question. For example, if you want to ask, ‘Have you done the dishes?” you would do the sign for ‘wash-the-dishes’, and then the sign for ‘finish’, and since it’s a yes/no question, you would show it’s a question by leaning forward and raising your eyebrows. If the English answer to that question is ‘yes’, then in Auslan, the answer would often be, FINISH. In Auslan, rather than answering questions with yes/no, speakers often respond with HAVE/DON’T-HAVE or FINISH/NOT YET/WILL or WANT/DON’T-WANT etc.

Learn Auslan – Directional signs and tense

These are signs which vary in direction according to context. For example, the following signs are signed differently depending on who is receiving:

• Give me/you/everyone
• Help me/you/everyone
• Teach you/me/everyone
• Show you/me
• Tell you/me

In the last lesson, I taught you to add the word FINISH to a verb, to show past tense. However, if that verb is directional, like the signs in the video, then you should add the sign FINISH before the verb, not after it. For example, “You told me not to!” would be signed, YOU FINISH TELL-ME NO!

As a rule, frozen signs use verb+FINISH, and directional signs use FINISH+verb

Learn Auslan – Lip patterns

In Auslan, the convention is to not mouth or speak the English words and sentences as you are signing, although some Deaf people do this to an extent anyway. For practise, try keeping your mouth closed as you sign. Avoid signing Auslan and verbally speaking English at the same time, as the English will confuse your Auslan grammar, facial expressions, depicting signs etc.

Auslan does, however, have its own lip patterns. These are the mouth shapes Deaf people make when they sign particular words. See the video for the lip patterns for these common words and phrases:

Vocab:

• Finish
• Never seen it / never heard of it
• Strange/weird

I used to think the world shouldn’t revolve around me…

When I was growing up, I was often reminded that the world doesn’t revolve around me. Instead of walking into a conversation saying “What?! What are you talking about?” I should wait, listen, and then thoughtfully contribute.

I get the idea behind this, I really do. In fact, I’ve totally internalised it. The problem is, it doesn’t work for Deaf people. I can’t slip into a conversation being held by hearing people and make a contribution at an appropriate moment.

Stella Young, comedian, activist and feminist who died in 2014, taught me that actually, it is appropriate for me to ask for access. We all have the right to be included. I still find it hard to accept this, and believe it, but I’m trying.

Instead of making an excuse for why I can’t go to a party or social event, I’m trying to learn to explain that I don’t want to come because if there are no signing people there, I would be excluded. Instead of accepting that I can’t take this course or that course, I am learning to ask the teacher to make the effort to adjust the curriculum so I can access it.

It’s hard, it’s awkward, and whenever I do this, I have that inner voice piping up: ‘the world doesn’t revolve around you!’ But when I think of OTHER people, of, say, Stella, who couldn’t get up a flight of stairs no matter how hard she wished it, I think, ‘Of course she should have access. Let’s all make it happen.’

This little image is a reminder to all of us, to make the effort to provide access to everyone. It might be someone who can’t read a sign because their glasses are at home, it might be an elderly relative who can no longer hear at the dinner table, or it might be someone like me, or Stella, who have to ask over and over, for access.

If you are in a position to provide access, maybe you can do so without being asked. Simply offer. Arrange for an interpreter if you are inviting a Deaf person to a hearing-only event. Check out a venue for access and toilet accessibility when inviting a person who uses a wheelchair, and let them know that you did so. I’m learning to ask… but when I don’t have to, it means the world to me.

Learn Auslan – Colloquialisms

These are common Auslan signs which don’t relate specifically to a single English word. Note that many of them have their own lip patterns too.

• Strange/weird
• Finally, at long last
• Too late
• Hopeless
• Oh, now I get it!
• Come on
• What luck this situation occurred!
• Take me home
• How dare you!
• Sprung! / Ah ha! Caught you! (In the video, just before this sign, I start to sign something else – please disregard that!)
• Please yourself
• Relief / phew

Learn Auslan – Impolite stuff

No language is complete without swear words, toilet words, genitals and sex words. I’ve grouped these together in this video so that parents who are studying this course with their children can decide whether to show them or not. This doesn’t mean that I think certain body parts are ‘rude’ or ‘impolite’. The sign for ‘toilet’ is in here – that isn’t a rude sign at all. I just grouped it here along with signs like ‘poo’ where are considered rude.

Fuck (this is not as rude as the equivalent work ‘fuck’ in English – it’s ruder than saying ‘damn’ but perhaps not quite as rude as saying ‘shit’)
Fuck you (this is offensive and hurtful)
Shit (this is used as a swear word (not to refer to ‘poo’) and it is not nearly as rude as ‘shit’ is in English. It’s more like saying ‘damn’ and you can even say it in somewhat polite company.)
• Toilet
• Poo
• Piss (man)
• Wee (woman)
• Vagina
• Penis
• Erection (option 1)
• Erection (option 2 – you can see an element of bragging and humour here!)
• Sex (this is the formal, polite sign for sex, however, if you are talking informally, you would be likely to show the position – the next three signs give examples of that.)
• 69
• spoon position
• sex scissor position
• cunnilingus (woman)
• blow job (man)

Learn Auslan – American fingerspelling

I am often asked if sign language is universal. It’s not. Auslan came to Australia with English convict Betty Steele, who signed BSL (British sign language). With years of isolation, Auslan and BSL have both evolved, so that while the languages are similar, they are now quite different. The Americans got their sign language from France, and French sign language looks very different to Auslan, as the fingerspelling and many of the hand signs are done with one hand instead of two.

If you put two signing people in the same room who don’t know each others’ language, they will work out how to communicate with each other much faster than two hearing/speaking people would. When I bumped into a group of Deaf women in France one time, despite me not knowing any French sign language and them not knowing any English or Auslan, we worked out how to communicate quite quickly. Within half an hour we had moved on to abstract concepts like planned obsolescence.

Back to American fingerspelling… in America there is a larger population of Deaf people than in Australia. They even have a Deaf university. This means that their language has more opportunities to evolve than ours, and although some people are against this practise, in Auslan we often borrow signs from ASL (American sign language). Also, several of these borrowed signs, and signs that are considered proper Auslan, are based on handshapes that come from the one-handed American alphabet. It’s handy to know the alphabet in order to familiarise yourself with these shapes.

Some people who use Auslan will spell with American sign language if they have only one hand available, because the other is busy holding a drink or something else. However, when I went to America, I discovered that the actual American letter T is different from the way Australians sign T when they think they are using American fingerspelling! There may be other letters that are different. This video shows my best guess for the American alphabet, and the way my friends and I use American fingerspelling:

In the video there are two variations for the letter T – the first one shows how American people actually sign it. The second one shows how Australians tend to sign it

A bit of love for you

What is a language if you don’t know how to tell someone you love them? In this video I sign, ‘You are beautiful. I love you.’ Then I wave goodbye, and as I wave, I change my handshape into the American sign for ‘I love you’.