Imagine what it would be like not being able to hear what is going on around you. Most of the people, in this world live in a world of sounds, and these people often take them for granted. Nevertheless, we completely depend on sounds to get through our everyday lives. Although the majority of people in this world can hear the sounds around them, there are people in this world that are not able to hear anything at all. For those that cannot hear and for those that are hearing impaired, they have developed ASL. “American Sign Language is a complex, visual-spatial language that is used by the deaf community (Nakumara, 1).” American Sign Language has been around for as long as there have been deaf people. In 1817 two individuals, named “Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc created the first official school for the Deaf in the United States” (Carlson, 1). After the school was opened and certain standards were set in the United States, ASL quickly spread throughout Canada. Canada too followed these same standards. This form of sign language was big and would be the basis of the language for years to come. ASL offers the deaf people of this world an opportunity to communicate. Just like the English language has nouns, verbs and adjectives, so does ASL. Despite the fact that both the languages share the same nouns, verbs and adjectives, this does not mean that they use the same grammatical similarities (Nakumara, 1). In the English language, a person speaks words and writes words. With ASL, most communication is in the form of hand gestures and is written in brail. Included with the hand gestures, it is necessary to use facial expression, such as raising an eyebrow or smiling because these expressions can be a very important part of the communication. Without using these facial expressions, feeling can definitely be lossed in the meaning of what the person speaking may be trying to get across. The deaf pe...
