Warlpiri, is an aboriginal language spoken by roughly half of the 5000 - 6000 people of the Warlpiri people in Australia's Northern Territory. It is a Ngarrkic language, which is part of the larger Pama-Nyungan language family, whose spread covers seven-eights of the Australian continent and has been proposed to be part of the Macro-Pama-Nyungan family, thus making the majority of Australian Aboriginal languages part of one family. It is worth noting that the Macro family is only proposed and not fully accepted by linguists, and there are still debates on the languages to be included in it.
Linguistics:
Language classification:
Warlpiri is a Ngarrkic language, which means it is related to other indigenous languages of Australia, such as Warlmanpa. Its full classification is as follows. The exact subgrouping of all the languages is, as yet, not completely proven, so I will be working from Bowern & Atkinson (2012):
Pama-Nyungan (Proto-Pama-Nyungan) > Desert Nyungic languages > Ngumpin-Yapa >Ngarrkic > Warlpiri
Warlpiri has a 3-vowel system, similar to that used in Classical Arabic. However, each of these vowels is distinguished by length, giving the language a total of 6 contrastive vowel sounds. Warlpiri distinguishes 18 consonants, at 5 places of articulation, with each place having both an oral and a nasal stop. The stops aren't contrasted for voicing (think English 'b' versus 'p'), though they appear as allophones, which voiceless generally being used at the beginning of a word and voiced otherwise. Warlpiri stops are generally [unaspirated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspir
... keep reading on reddit β‘ETA: Not asking for judgement on the personal medical decision MY family made for OUR daughter. She has not had an interest in an implant but if she does later on, the option is available. We wanted her to have the choice, but also to grow up in deaf culture. I am not going to defend this anymore to Internet randoms, but please consider researching deaf opinions on the matter. As a hearing person, I can only give a very limited perspective.
Hi all. I (30F) am hearing, married to a deaf man (32M) - Iβm going to call him Walter - and we have a deaf daughter (6F) - Iβll call her Cora. Walter comes from a primarily deaf family but my family is all hearing. We have chosen to raise Cora with sign language and not go for an implant - this is simply for context, I am NOT seeking judgement on this!
Before Walter and I got married, my parents began to take classes to learn ASL, as did my brother and his family. My sister, Emily, took them for a bit but ended up not continuing due to βlack of interest.β She and her husband have not taken any lessons, nor have their 3 children. Walter tried introducing their daughter to baby sign when she and Cora were both very young but my brother in law asked him to stop, as he didnβt want to βconfuse her.β Cora and her cousins play as best they can with the language barrier but itβs extremely frustrating for her to feel like she isnβt being understood. When my brotherβs children (who visit only a few times a year) visit, they interpret for her, or Walter and I have to constantly be looking over their shoulders to help resolve their miscommunications, which is too helicopter parent for me.
When we learned Cora was deaf, Emily pestered me about getting her an implant and continues to send me shame-y Facebook posts about the benefits of the implant and those videos of babies hearing for the first time. She constantly says itβs βbetter than having to learn two languages.β Sheβs been very pushy about it, to the point she and Walter got in a heated argument over it. Since then, she has not pestered him about it, only me.
My last straw was this past weekend. Emily was with all her kids, teaching them a game. I noticed that Cora wasnβt joining, so I brought her over and Emily outright told me that Cora couldnβt play, because itβs a game βfor people who can speak.β I was fuming and pulled her aside. I told her that my daughter can communicate, just not how Emily wants, and said that I wonβt have my daughter excluded for something so
... keep reading on reddit β‘When I was 18 I was in an accident that caused TBI, resulting in me losing most of my hearing in both ears, making me deaf. I didn't qualify for cochlear implants, so being deaf was just my new reality.
Obviously this derailed my life for a while. University got pushed back, and I was depressed for a long time. Eventually I got back out there, discovered the deaf community, learned ASL (american sign language), and at 26 I now feel very content with my life.
My parents were devastated by my accident, and our relationship has never been the same. A few years ago I told them I have embraced being deaf, and I asked them if they would learn ASL, as that is now how I prefer to communicate. They said no at the time because they didn't have time to learn a new language. I have tried many times over the years to try to give them information on deafness and ASL, but they have shown no interest.
We communicate now mainly by using voice-to-text on our phones, which is far from perfect, and very chaotic when multiple people are talking. Trying to keep up with conversations is exhausting, and people are constantly getting frustrated with me for not following along. Often we watch movies, but they refuse to turn the captions on because it's "annoying", despite the fact that it means I can't understand the movie at all.
This past Christmas, I once again struggled with conversations, which once again resulted in me being either ignored or yelled at. Before I went home again, I sat my parents down and told them that if they did not begin to learn ASL, I would not be visiting again for a long time. I told them I don't expect them to ever be fluent, but I need them to show effort in learning. I told them that they have continuously dismissed my needs as a deaf person, and that if they want to continue to have a meaningful relationship with me, we need to have some kind of shared language.
This didn't go over well at all, as my parents accused me of wanting to cut them off, which isn't true. I just can't do any more visits where my presence feels like a burden. My brother and I have been texting since then, and he thinks I'm being hugely unfair.
So AITA?
EDIT I can't respond to everyone, but thank you everyone so much for your kind words and support. I have been spending the last few days wondering if I'm being unreasonable or dramatic, as even though my friends (most of whom are deaf) support me, I didn't know what the hearing would would think of this. I can n
... keep reading on reddit β‘You never know when it might come in handy
Seems like a simple fix to me. If you have to learn Spanish in the US so you can communicate with Spanish speakers, that still leaves out the entire rest of the world. So why not we all learn sign language to communicate with everyone?
For context: Both of my parents are deaf so I speak fluent Auslan (Australian sign language). This is known by all of my teachers plus the principal because I act as an interpreter for my parents during parent-teacher meetings. My high school has quite a few HOH/ deaf students- maybe 20 out of like 2000 students.
The other day my name was on the school notices asking me to come see the principal at break time. When I went he asked me to wait and called in one of the special ed teachers. After she arrived they asked me to take a seat and told me that they were very excited to be introducing a new kind of inclusion program in the school. The principal then said something like,
"OP, we know that you're very proficient in Auslan. We would love to make the school more inclusive and thought that you could work on school parades (school assemblies) as an interpreter for our HOH students."
Honestly, I'm really not keen about this idea. Interpreting is exhausting, not to mention I would hate to stand up in front of the whole school at every assembly. I told him that I thought it was a great idea to have an interpreter, but that I'm not really interested in doing that.
My principal seemed understanding and let me go back to class. On the final period of the day, however, I was called out of class by the special ed teacher that had been in the room with the principal and me. When I stepped out the first thing she said to me was
"I'm pretty disappointed in you, OP."
I asked about what and she said
"For not taking initiative. You have the power to help our HOH students by assisting them to join in school activities and you're not using it. This is a public school, OP, we can't afford an interpreter. I think that you're being pretty selfish."
This honestly really annoyed me and this is where I might be the asshole. I said that if she wanted an Auslan interpreter so badly why didn't she learn the language herself? And that she isn't entitled to my help.
She says, "You're being really immature, OP. All I was asking for is a little help."
I told her that I had already said no and asked her why she felt the need to pull me out of class to ask the same question she had seen me answer like 3 hours ago.
She says "ok, we're done talking if you can't be mature about this."
I say "great" and walk back inside my classroom. She catches the door as it closes and says loudly to my teacher,
"I'm very disappointed in her, Ms X, very disappointed."
For the rest of t
... keep reading on reddit β‘I personally haven't a clue how to communicate in sign. Of course, if I really wanted to I could make the effort. I just think it'd be useful for children to acquire even a basic understanding of this communication while they're young & can adapt quicker. Who knows, 15 years later an individual may be able to assist someone hard of hearing even if it's something basic.
(Removed previous post regarding both Sign & Braille)
I (30sF) have been married to Buford (40sM) for about a year. I brought Jay (8M) and Juniper (5F) from a past marriage, and until very recently we thought Buford had no children. We had no intentions of having more kids.
As it happens though, it turns out Buford actually does have a daughter Markita (15F). Her mom did not tell Buford about her pregnancy and ultimately moved states, so he had no idea until she reached out on FB. We were a little dubious, but she turned out to be right. Markita and mom moved back to our state in the meantime and live about 40 minutes from us. She wants visitation with Buford which he has agreed to. There's no formal custody arrangement between Buford and mom so it's basically just sporadic weekends and school holidays. Usually this is just between the two of them, but sometimes she will come to the house and has even slept over a few times.
Here's my dilemma. Markita is hearing impaired. I'm not entirely sure to what degree but I do know she almost exclusively uses ASL. No one in our family knows ASL but Buford has been trying to learn for her. The last time Markita was here he pitched to me the idea of us learning ASL as a family.
The truth is that I really don't know if that is worth the effort. Markita is present at our house maybe once a month. I would consider it if she were going to be over more often, but I work 48 hours a week and I just don't have time for something like this. I also know 3 different languages, one of which was in adulthood and it was very difficult for me even fifteen years ago. I just can't fit something like that into my life, but I told Buford that Jay and Juniper can still learn if they're interested.
The kids don't want to since I'm not and now Buford thinks I'm being ridiculous since I have no other way of communicating with Markita. I told him we can work something out but he didn't want to hear it honestly. Markita also thinks I should learn some basic signs but between work and kids even that would be a struggle. AITA for not wanting to learn sign language?
Among other disabilities, I (16NB) have auditory processing disorder (APD). In short, it's a hearing impairment - my ears work fine but the part of my brain that processes sound is a bit broken and therefore I can't hear very well. I need subtitles on videos, I can't hear very well in loud or busy places, and when people say something to me whilst facing away from me, speaking too quickly, or mumbling even a little, it's total gibberish.
Most people refuse to acknowledge that APD is actually a hearing impairment and insist on treating me like a fully hearing person. This is very frustrating to me because, obviously, this impedes my life in lots of ways. My parents often try to say stuff to me from different rooms or even different floors of the house (having stuff yelled to me from downstairs when I'm upstairs in my room, etc). I've told them repeatedly to text me or come through to the room I'm in instead of yelling because I can't tell what they're saying, but they ignore it. I also have accomodations in college like I need to have things written down for me (this is a point in an official accomodation plan I have) but my teachers often don't write stuff down for me. My classmates are also often unnecessarily loud and occasionally do stuff like play music out loud without headphones, which is insanely frustrating.
I've recently been thinking about what I can do to get people to actually acknowledge my disability and I've come up with two things. Essentially, I've decided that I want to learn sign language, so if it's too loud for me to distinguish what the person I'm talking to is saying or if I'm just too tired to actively listen and distinguish what somebody I'd saying, I can use sign language instead (provided that they know sign language of course). I was telling this to a friend and they told me (quite rudely, actually) that I just need to try harder to listen to people. Apparently, learning sign language when I'm not actually deaf is appropriating deaf culture.
I totally get that it's rude to deliberately make jokes about deaf people or sign language or to deliberately mis-sign things or to make sign languages out to not be real languages, but given that auditory processing disorder is a real disorder and hearing impairment, I don't think that it's fair to say that I can't learn it. AITA?
I'm a Sagittarius, Ravenclaw, and physical touch is my love language(:
I feel like sign language is really important to the point that it should be taught in schools. Why is it not? While subjects like spanish are a thing
I want to first preface this with the disclaimer that I don't have language delays or issues speaking. I actually am a very, very good public speaker. However, I often have gone through periods of my life where I've just felt like not talking.
It's not selective mutism as it's not related to anxiety. It just feels like speaking is a lot of effort and I don't feel like it. I'm bilingual and it feels similar to not wanting to put the effort in to speaking your second language. There's nothing impeding it other than feeling mild to moderately mentally tired.
I know a small range of signs to communicate with some non-verbal and deaf/hard of hearing peers I had growing up. I used to Sign to friends in class instead of passing notes (largely fingerspelling to fill in what we didn't know).
I was recently diagnosed so there are many things that I've reflected on lately and gone "huh, I wonder if that's related to the ASD..."
Sure, there are apps for BSL but they often just have you watch a video and copy, I want that demonic bird to furiously sign at me that Iβm a failure! I know there may be changes needed for existing activities like when you tap words to form a sentence, but you could have little emojis you click on that show you the full sign, then you string them together into the right order for the little demonβs approval.
Also, a BSL GCSE would be cool. Just a thought.
