In the past fifty years there has been many advances, changes and controversy over the American Deaf community’s language, American Sign Language, and the new system of visual English, Signed Exact English. American Sign Language (ASL) is a complete, distinct language with its own vocabulary and grammar that developed almost two hundred years ago. Signed Exact English (SEE) is a recently new communication system of English through a combination of ASL signs, modified ASL signs, and unique English signs. American Sign Language is a preferred system of communication over Signed Exact English because of its difference in historical background, linguistics, uses in the world, and recent technology.
The distinction in …show more content…
Every language in the world have their own linguistics, but some languages have similarities because of culture. ASL has its own culture and its own phonetics, syntax, grammar, and punctuation. Sign language are the only language to be addressed as Visual-manual. All languages come with a system of phonological processes, the phonology in spoken languages is the organization of sounds. The phonology of a sign language is the hand shape, orientation, location, and motion of signing. The syntax of ASL is an arrangement of “topic-comment,” “time-topic-comment,” or “subject-verb-object,” not unlike English syntax but without English’s use of be verbs (is, am, are, etc.) (Miller Signingsavvy.com). ASL has its own vocabulary and any words that are not in the list are spelled out or described. Spelling words out come more commonly in ASL than SEE because of its use. SEE has a sign or series of signs for every word in the English …show more content…
It started with the teletypewriter, or TTY, then hearing aids, and finally Cochlear Implants. To use a TTY you must be able to read and write, whether or not it is in proper English, those that use ASL or SEE are benefited from the device. The most conflicting technology in the Deaf community is Cochlear Implants; those that use SEE are more supportive of Cochlear Implants because they would rather be able to hear than use sign. Before 2016 there wasn’t a way for a computer to translate sign language. Two University of Washington students, Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor, invented a prototype pair of gloves to translate American Sign Language into speech or text. The gloves are called SignAloud and they are equipped with sensors and connected to a computer. The computer evaluates the movements and translates gestures. From the video demo they made the gloves translate ASL words, letters, and names. The gloves translated, “Hello my name is Thomas. And this is Navid. We are inventors in the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize Competition,” from Thomas signing the sentences (Langston, Washington.edu). The gloves filled in words there isn’t a sign for in ASL and identified name sign designated for himself and his partner. He signed in English order, like SEE, so when the phrases were translated it was not