Sign Language
Wolran Kim
July 2010
Reflective Essay
A man with a strong physique came into the classroom accompanied by two young ladies. I'd gone to take an examination after quitting my job one heavy rain day, worried I would drift away, just like the protagonist of a novel who left school merely because the salvia in the schoolyard were too red. And then, I wasn't must be lose my composure to watch them with curiosity. I was in blank amazement having come back to school again after twenty-two years in a foreign country. One of the two ladies, with the instructor's consent, sat by the projector and started to dance with her fingers in front of the man who sat on the head row. I'd seen sign language on rare occasions in Korea but ASL was unique and different from Korean sign. Only used to watching practical sign languages of Orientals, I fell in ecstasy of the hands’ dance with expressive ears, eyes, mouth, and nose together. There is no need to say the importance of hands to the human body, but how wondrous ten fingers are as a substitute for the language of infinite compounds of the twenty-six letters.
All classroom sounds were interpreted by the two ladies’ hands word for word for a three hour class every week. All sounds transformed into voiceless language whenever we watched movies, discussed in groups, laughter, and even when we were in commotions. All of a sudden my ears, which couldn't hear grammar and spelling, started to live in luxury in front of festival of the sounds. The feast of expression, a peculiar American's gesture in the voiceless film, never ended. Their sign language was a dance of the whole body. Silence went through the heart of the wall, flown like a fluency filled void. The fact that the fingers can serve as a sound struck me as a more momentous awakening than any examination date on the syllabus.
Sign language is a species of language which communicates by hand and varies according to locality; the majority of users are an aurally disabled. The countries which use same spoken language also use different sign languages, and the countries which use different spoken languages, also use similar sign languages too. It is easier to find common features between sign languages than spoken languages. We also can recognize hand shape, palm direction, hand position, hand motion, and facial expression. Babies who watch sign language while they grow; they practice the gestures just like babies who learn spoken language practice pronunciation by babelling. Gestures of sign language are observed earlier than babelling, there are many similarities between them.
Those with disabilities grandly showed me that every disorder has possibilities. One of my friends once said, "Why are there so many handicapped people in United States?" She was right! We can see disabilities much more often here than in Korea, which overflows with walking people everywhere. All of the accommodations for disabilities are conspicuous wherever I go, and they have a dignified attitude. In Korea, we can rarely see them because they usually stay home or are in special institutions. However it may have changed over the last twenty years.
The very next day in math class, I saw another man who came into the classroom by rolling his round legs. He rolled along just like a wagon while I was walking. He must not have been paralyzed because he jumped up from his wheelchair sometimes and came to solve equations after he rolled over the earth. A fraction is undefined if a denominator is zero--hard to define, dependent, uncertain--His round legs were just like ZERO. Life can be divided only by a positive number, not zero, but his fraction is not self conceit, not just watching the sun on a chair. He was solving his equation of life with zero.
He was the spitting image of Bruce Willis fresh from the set of the sequel "Die Hard”-- his skinhead always covered with a floral patterned scarf, an everyday spring. His sole leather jumper must have come through a sound wind. "Why can’t my life walk?" When he loads his collapsed life without any aggression after running breathless, like a rickshaw, after his arm muscles burst into a rage from rolling his round legs. I felt like that I already finished solving infinitesimal calculus. I left the fact behind me that I'd walked shamelessly with two legs until now. His deformed legs were elevating my perfect legs. I also carved the equation of hope on my legs whenever the instructor was writing down solutions of equations solved by his mouth.
I liked solitude better than friends; I liked loneliness better than chattering; therefore, I turned my head toward sorrow rather than delight and handed myself over to despair, not hope. I habitually said "How come my life is such disgrace!" like a mental disorder. My ten curled fingers were spread and two unsteady legs stood straight in front of silence shouted and round legs. That shout cried as a super speed pantomime toward my noisy life, which was deafened.
Human eyes which have the dilation of the pupil in the dark; two hands and two feet which climb up after throwing a rope in front of an inaccessible precipice; as expected, doesn't hope match us much better than despair? Zeus became angry with Prometheus who gave the heaven’s fire to humans, so he let earthen Pandora take the box filled with every possible unhappiness and misery to the human world in the Greek myth. The curious Pandora opened the box and all unhappiness and misery poured down upon humans. But Pandora hastily closed the box in confusion and only hope was left inside. People, who live holding Pandora's Box, are an "aspiration", not "disability". The voice without even a voice, echoed wide through ten fingertips throughout my first spring semester.
Wolran Kim
July 2010
Reflective Essay
A man with a strong physique came into the classroom accompanied by two young ladies. I'd gone to take an examination after quitting my job one heavy rain day, worried I would drift away, just like the protagonist of a novel who left school merely because the salvia in the schoolyard were too red. And then, I wasn't must be lose my composure to watch them with curiosity. I was in blank amazement having come back to school again after twenty-two years in a foreign country. One of the two ladies, with the instructor's consent, sat by the projector and started to dance with her fingers in front of the man who sat on the head row. I'd seen sign language on rare occasions in Korea but ASL was unique and different from Korean sign. Only used to watching practical sign languages of Orientals, I fell in ecstasy of the hands’ dance with expressive ears, eyes, mouth, and nose together. There is no need to say the importance of hands to the human body, but how wondrous ten fingers are as a substitute for the language of infinite compounds of the twenty-six letters.
All classroom sounds were interpreted by the two ladies’ hands word for word for a three hour class every week. All sounds transformed into voiceless language whenever we watched movies, discussed in groups, laughter, and even when we were in commotions. All of a sudden my ears, which couldn't hear grammar and spelling, started to live in luxury in front of festival of the sounds. The feast of expression, a peculiar American's gesture in the voiceless film, never ended. Their sign language was a dance of the whole body. Silence went through the heart of the wall, flown like a fluency filled void. The fact that the fingers can serve as a sound struck me as a more momentous awakening than any examination date on the syllabus.
Sign language is a species of language which communicates by hand and varies according to locality; the majority of users are an aurally disabled. The countries which use same spoken language also use different sign languages, and the countries which use different spoken languages, also use similar sign languages too. It is easier to find common features between sign languages than spoken languages. We also can recognize hand shape, palm direction, hand position, hand motion, and facial expression. Babies who watch sign language while they grow; they practice the gestures just like babies who learn spoken language practice pronunciation by babelling. Gestures of sign language are observed earlier than babelling, there are many similarities between them.
Those with disabilities grandly showed me that every disorder has possibilities. One of my friends once said, "Why are there so many handicapped people in United States?" She was right! We can see disabilities much more often here than in Korea, which overflows with walking people everywhere. All of the accommodations for disabilities are conspicuous wherever I go, and they have a dignified attitude. In Korea, we can rarely see them because they usually stay home or are in special institutions. However it may have changed over the last twenty years.
The very next day in math class, I saw another man who came into the classroom by rolling his round legs. He rolled along just like a wagon while I was walking. He must not have been paralyzed because he jumped up from his wheelchair sometimes and came to solve equations after he rolled over the earth. A fraction is undefined if a denominator is zero--hard to define, dependent, uncertain--His round legs were just like ZERO. Life can be divided only by a positive number, not zero, but his fraction is not self conceit, not just watching the sun on a chair. He was solving his equation of life with zero.
He was the spitting image of Bruce Willis fresh from the set of the sequel "Die Hard”-- his skinhead always covered with a floral patterned scarf, an everyday spring. His sole leather jumper must have come through a sound wind. "Why can’t my life walk?" When he loads his collapsed life without any aggression after running breathless, like a rickshaw, after his arm muscles burst into a rage from rolling his round legs. I felt like that I already finished solving infinitesimal calculus. I left the fact behind me that I'd walked shamelessly with two legs until now. His deformed legs were elevating my perfect legs. I also carved the equation of hope on my legs whenever the instructor was writing down solutions of equations solved by his mouth.
I liked solitude better than friends; I liked loneliness better than chattering; therefore, I turned my head toward sorrow rather than delight and handed myself over to despair, not hope. I habitually said "How come my life is such disgrace!" like a mental disorder. My ten curled fingers were spread and two unsteady legs stood straight in front of silence shouted and round legs. That shout cried as a super speed pantomime toward my noisy life, which was deafened.
Human eyes which have the dilation of the pupil in the dark; two hands and two feet which climb up after throwing a rope in front of an inaccessible precipice; as expected, doesn't hope match us much better than despair? Zeus became angry with Prometheus who gave the heaven’s fire to humans, so he let earthen Pandora take the box filled with every possible unhappiness and misery to the human world in the Greek myth. The curious Pandora opened the box and all unhappiness and misery poured down upon humans. But Pandora hastily closed the box in confusion and only hope was left inside. People, who live holding Pandora's Box, are an "aspiration", not "disability". The voice without even a voice, echoed wide through ten fingertips throughout my first spring semester.