Sign language

So these two guys were on the train the other day during my regular commute from Shinji to Matsue. As you can see, not particularly crowded, but what caught my attention was more or less their flailing of arms.

In a country where staring at Luke seems to be a national pastime, I can't really get comfortable with returning the favor. I mention this because after about 5 minutes of sitting next to these guys I realized there were no words leaving their mouths...the flailing of arms was some sort of communication, and all I could do was watch.

Your thinking sign language, and you'd be right and wrong at the same time.

I do not claim to know sign language, but I know what it looks like. I remember a house not 2-3 lots away from where I grew up, a family moved in for what now seems in my memory no more than 6 months. This family had a mute son, and if I was 12 he was probably 14-16. During the summers, when josh, kate and I were on elementary school break, dad would take us to godekee library every week. After playing with that kid one day I got interested enough that the next time I went to the library I got a workbook on sign language. Unlike josh or kate I wasn't much of a reader, but I really got into the learning sign language for a short while.

I remember working on the alphabet with him and some other simple words, but that's also where my memory stops. We couldn't have hung out for more than a couple of weeks at most and that also explains why I don't remember when his family moved away. Maybe my folks can help shed some light on this. Besides that, minor brushes with sign language were all I really had. One of my later teachers had deaf and mute parents and made it a point to teach his students signing every once in while....the point is this, I've been exposed but couldn't do any more than a,b,c and the one fingered sign for "your my most favorite person at this very moment!".

I mention this because as I sat there watching these two older men conversing....I thought about that kid I knew and could come up with no other conclusion than that it was sign language they were using, but nothing I had ever seen. What I am able to recognize and didn't see, and just assumed was THE "sign language" is what's known as ASL, or american sign language.

Its a simple concept and yet I find it so interesting. I had just figured, there was only one way in which folks who can't communicate by mouth learned how to talk to each other. But in fact "sign language", the language that precedes even mans ability to talk, is just a broad category a genre if you will. By asking around later that day I found out there is more or less a signed language for every spoken one....and they even get as detailed as certain dialects in different parts of larger countries like the states. I was witnessing Japanese sign language, which is cool for a bunch of different reasons unique to JSL. If your even remotely interested, I have included a link to a quick read at the bottom.

Anyways, I have no doubt many of you already knew this and I feel a little silly for never realizing it myself.

Think about this though, who knows how many spoken languages there are in this world....but basically now I take that number, which is big, and multiply it by two....that's huge. I'm trying to understand Japanese, and its a doozy, but its just one out of that huge number.

Being humbled is good.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Sign_Language