Busted ! Linguistic giggles on the road...

Maybe it has happened to you... maybe you are even the guilty party when you're travelling.

That false sense of... security when the locals do not speak your language, so with the people who are travelling with you, you can dare to say things which you wouldn't dare to say at home?

However, if you're a local, but you use a language that is little "spoken"... Mhhh...

A few days ago during my lunch break, I went to Air France's bureaus in downtown Montréal (just a few stops away, with the subway).

On my way back, I was at the Peel subway station, and there was a woman in her 50s and a woman in ther mid 20s. (Mom and daughter? Probably)

Dang, they are signing!

In deaf culture like in our hearing culture, it's not polite to eavesdrop. :)

However, at a subway station, waiting for the metro to arrive... it's difficult... to not look. On the other... hand (pun not intended!!!), since I'm learning ASL... there's an academic value to observe a conversation in ASL going on, right? Hehehe....

I'm not fluent enough to understand everything being signed, but I get the gist of the conversation. About Canadian politics, and it is also my understanding that they don't like the Conservatives. :)

Then about H-A-R-P-E-R (dang, fingerspelling)... with my limited ASL... I suddenly see before my eyes: "He's a dick".

It just dings in my head, and gone was my poker face. I couldn't stop giggling!!

Oh well... :)

(I'm skeptical whether this is proper ASL. The daughter signed "HE" followed by the sign of _that_ male attribute.

Maybe she's the hearing person, and her mom the deaf person? Often, I speak French in English (it's often reciprocal, by the way!) , using French idioms in English and vice in the versa. Can English idioms translate that way in ASL? Feel free to comment. :) ).

So I got busted... The two ladies were surprise at first, and then realizing what has just been signed, they too began to giggle.

At this point, if ASL was a spoken language, the conversation would have stopped there. The metro was arriving in station and the infernal LOUD noise that it makes would just make conversation, any conversation impossible.

Except in ASL, of course. Deaf people can't notice that, but as a hearing person, I do!

So we had some little extra time, enough to wave a friendly hello, and for me to sign "I HEARING, I LEARNING A-S-L.

And to get from both ladies, signs for GOOD/EXCELLENT ! They were all smiles.

And off we go, back to our respective path...

You know what? There are those little unexpected things happening... that lighten a day. Ok, not so little, Hey, I'm a man, after all!

If you've been wondering... I'm sure you are curious... about _those_ words. N'est-ce pas? :)

Here's a link to ASLPro video dictionary. From there, click on the letter P, and then complete the word... with the letter "enis". You'll see one of the signs for a certain male attribute. :)

As a man, I find the latter part of that sign, a bit... humiliating!!

As a sidenote: When learning a new language, it's interesting to see how things are perceived and understood by native "speakers" (signers, in this case!).

Some signs are really... well, amazing! Clever, really clever!

Don't take my word (sign?) that this is proper ASL for signing... how you feel about a person (ie, he's a d...ck), even if I have seen it being signed. I think the sign is just the clinical description of an intimate part of a male body.

Personally, I would fingerspell every letter, first to make sure that I'm understood, and second... to really _insist_ (therefore spelling it), how I feel about a certain person!

That being said... this is not a political statement about our beloved Prime Minister, by the name of mhhh... H-A-R-P-E-R. Nawww. :)

Cheers!

-E