Jacob Longstreth AMSL 1010 Spring 2018 International Sign Language (ISL) is a common ground for all of the deaf community to unite and communicate. I feel without this common ground for the deaf, it would ultimately be like those who use speaking languages to communicate. Unfortunately, it is quite seldom that those who use a speaking language as their main form of communication are able to communicate with others from different countries, cultures, etc. For example, in middle school I went on a trip to both Mexico and Costa Rica. On both of these trips, we were accompanied by a tour guide as nearly no one knew the primary language in either of the two countries we were visiting. We had no way of communicating. This is something I feel makes knowing American Sign Language (ASL), as well as International Sign Language (ISL) not only a pertinent way of communicating, but also allows us to reach a whole new community of people in its entirety. In class, during our activity of Gestuno, I felt that learning International Sign Language, although we may not use it near as frequently as American Sign Language, was still very important in knowing/learning to acquire the skills in being fluent in both. This gives us the opportunity to be more inclusive with the deaf from other countries, as per in class, we also learned how the use of International Sign Language (ISL) is used in the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) congress, as well as events such as the Deaflympics. I think this goes beyond learning the language itself, but also the culture and about others with disabilities. Being deaf has its own culture due to many factors, but the most prominent being people who are deaf or hard of hearing can not hear to the full extent as others; hence, relying on other senses to make up. Most often I think their visual sense increases drastically, making them more observant to body language, social cues, etc. to situations without being able to hear. This also opens our eyes to not only deaf people, but those who have disabilities. I think it reaches a much larger crowd and this class allows us to explore others’ differences past deafness.
