Peeking Into a Whole New World: An Experience Learning Singapore Sign Language
PERSONAL STORY
Written by Anna Sulaiman
Published April 13, 2024
This article is also available in: Deutsch.
“An outsider looking in,” that’s how I feel about my journey in learning Singapore Sign Language. Not having anyone in my social circles who uses Sign Language, my foray into it was purely out of curiosity and wanting to connect if the situation arose.
(Illustrated by Jyinra Lin and Marvin Nauendorff for Linguaphile Magazine)
I used to sit at a café studying Japanese every weekend as my daughter attended ballet classes nearby. It was my dedicated time to indulge in my love of language. I’d lug my textbooks and spend a good hour savouring coffee and complex Japanese grammar.
The café was manned often solely by a Deaf person, who I came to know later as Steve*. There was a sign that declared it and customers ordered by pointing at the menu or through writing on the tablet that he kept handy on the counter. At first, all I thought about was how it was great to see a business that saw no loss in hiring a Deaf worker. Admittedly, my audism also had me thinking how great it was that Steve had the skills to manage the café with hearing loss.
In case ‘audism’ is a word that is new to you, as it was to me prior to picking up Singapore Sign Language (SgSL), allow me to share a little. Humphrey and Alcorn (1995) describe audism as “the notion that one is superior based on one’s ability to hear or behave in the manner of one who hears”. This unconscious bias was what led to my surprise that Steve could man the café alone. Of course he could. Nothing about manning the café was affected by his Deafness. It was my ignorance alone that saw him as ‘handicapped’ in being able to do the job.
As interactions became more frequent with my weekly visit to that café, I could see for myself that he was not just capable of being the sole staff member, he was, in fact, excellent at the job; those were busy Saturday mornings too. In fact, with time, it was me who felt inadequate.
I’m the sort of person who likes to make small talk with strangers. In multilingual and touristy Singapore, sometimes that means speaking in different languages regularly, especially in encounters with older folk. I pride myself on being able to navigate basic conversations, switching back and forth, without too much difficulty. My morning runs would be peppered with “Zhao!” and “Pagi!” as I spot the regular elderly taking their walks or practising Qigong together. Caught in the rain at the bus stop, I’ve had conversations in a mix of broken Mandarin and Malay about how the rain these days made it hard to get the laundry done.
Yet there I was at the café, ordering from Steve every week without any form of basic language, simply pointing and trying to relay my greetings with smiles and nods. There I sat studying Japanese every week, conscious that I was putting in so much effort to become fluent in a language that I rarely communicate in, a bitter aftertaste forming in my mouth from not having even the most basic of Sign Language to talk to Steve. All I could do was sign ‘Thank You’. My distaste for my own inadequacy grew into a determination to overcome my disability. I would sign up for Sign Language classes, I decided.
Sadly Covid-19 hit us and lockdowns began quite soon after I made that call. Perhaps the pandemic also affected the café’s business, because it relocated. I had no means to contact Steve, but thankful that he had sparked that awareness and desire in me, I went ahead with classes. After all, while it may not be Steve with whom I would communicate, I realised ahead lay the opportunity to connect with so many others.
There are an estimated 500,000 people with hearing loss or deafness in Singapore. 8.4% of the population as of September 2022.
My best friend, who had wanted to learn Sign Language for his own reasons some time ago, decided he would join me. (I squealed in delight when he said this because having a language-learning partner is such a blessing. But that would be a story for another time.) The search for a class led us to take lessons at what we thought would be the most reliable organization to do so, the Singapore Association for the Deaf. Online lessons were the only available mode still. We managed to get the last two spots in the class and began a trip into a world that was more unknown than I’d imagined.
A world that remains, after 3 years of study, still very much unknown. I was an outsider looking in through a very tiny window.
I’m familiar with language lessons. I’ve attended language classes since I was 13. And yet, I have never once felt so clueless. It wasn’t just that I did not have much prior exposure to the language itself. It was that I did not have much prior exposure to the world tied to the language.
Since its establishment in 1955, the Singapore Association for the Deaf (SADeaf) has been a pillar of support for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community, spanning six decades of service. SADeaf plays a vital role in advocating for the rights and needs of its members. (Photo by the author)
Language is so intricately linked with culture. I think as an English speaker, I don’t appreciate this enough. English, being spoken by so many people all over the globe, doesn’t quite make me think of culture. Languages of rich cultures such as Mandarin, French, Arab, and Japanese that I had dabbled in before, I had seen or heard of often in the media.
They were less foreign to me than a language that carried the name of the country I was born and bred in. Singapore Sign Language and its culture were completely missing from my schema. When I saw the words ‘Deaf Culture’ on the course material, I drew a blank.
“We have our own local version of Sign Language?” I asked myself. It was just one of the many questions I had, a testament to how ignorant I was, am, about the world of the Deaf. But, I always tell my students to ask even the most ‘stupid’ of questions. I always tell them that the stupider the question feels, the more you should get it out of your system because you don’t want the 'stupid' to stay inside you. So, I took my own advice and allowed myself to ask the 'stupid' questions.
Thankfully, the course materials were designed with the assumption that the participants came with zero prior knowledge. The lessons included information on Sign Language and Deaf Culture, that answered some of my questions before I needed to build up the courage to ask:
No, Sign Language isn’t just a word-for-word translation of English or the locally spoken language.
Yes, Singapore Sign Language has its own grammar.
No, Singapore Sign Language isn’t just gestures.
Actually, Sign Language is not one language. There are many sign languages in the world.
I also came to learn of things I’d never have thought to ask about. One of which is the idea of a sign name. Sign names, like the names we are born with, are assigned to us instead of chosen. The Deaf Community gives these unique identifying signs not always in relation to your given, written name. Two Glorias for instance might have completely different sign names. Some sign names contain initials, whereas others contain descriptive properties, and sometimes the sign names would be a combination of the two. If one Gloria had a large nose, for instance, the sign name assigned could be the shape of a ‘g’ as would be made in fingerspelling, with movement along the nose bridge and facial gesturing to show emphasis on the nose. Being given a sign name is like an initiation, almost. When I received my sign name, I felt like my window into the world of the Deaf was made a tiny bit larger.
Still, as lessons progress and I begin to learn more of the language and the Deaf Culture, I am acutely aware of how little I know.
There are historical reasons why learning Sign Language is like being an outsider looking in. Users of sign languages have faced many challenges that forced them to abandon or use their languages in secret. In 1880, The Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Milan, a conference of deaf educators, even went so far as to ban the use of Sign Language in schools. It was thought that ‘oralism’ was superior to sign language in educating the deaf. A formal apology for this decision was issued only as recently as 2010.
As a hearing person, I won’t pretend to understand the impact of such a challenge or try to relate to other challenges faced by users of Sign Language. But as a person of a minority race, I can relate to the desire to hold close to the chest things that you count as a key part of your identity.
Sign language classes offered to the hearing in Singapore had in the past been more catered towards people who had to play the role of interpreter or had family they needed to communicate with. These days, there are at least three organisations that offer Singapore Sign Language classes to the public. There is growing interest in the language among hearing people and a growing effort by the Deaf community to share it.
(Photo by the author)
It is an exciting time to learn Singapore Sign Language. Picking it up right now is also bearing witness to the rapid evolution of a language. I’ve had the privilege of taking classes in two organisations and also being part of online groups. While at first I found it rather confusing, I have come to enjoy watching the negotiations between the Deaf Singaporeans on which signs being used are truly SgSL, or signs that are reminiscent of sign language systems that were previously adopted like Signing Exact English. Now, with the Singapore Government announcing research efforts towards making Singapore Sign Language the fifth official national language, I can only imagine how the language will grow!
And certainly, I feel hopeful that the window for learners like me, looking into the world of Singapore Sign Language, will grow larger.
Written by
Imagery
Kua Chee Siong
Jyinra Lin
Marvin Nauendorff
The Straits Times
Singapore Association for the Deaf (SADeaf)
Edited by
Alice Pol, Anthony Burger, Aline Vitaly & Marvin Nauendorff
Acknowledgements
Singapore Association for the Deaf (SADeaf)
Muhammad Zahin Feroz Khan
Steve
Cite This ArtiScle
Sulaiman, Anna. 2024. "Peeking Into a Whole New World: An Experience Learning Singapore Sign Language" Linguaphile Magazine. https://www.linguaphilemagazine.org/editorial/peeking-into-a-whole-new-world.
Further Reading
Sign Bank offers a comprehensive dictionary of SgSL signs.
Singapore Association for the Deaf offers various resources to learn SgSL.
S'pore Association for the Deaf helps build children's confidence with sign language by Mark Cheong and Kua Chee Siong for The Straits Times.
How One Organization Aids The Deaf in Singapore on The Borgen Project.
Bibliography
Cole, Max. 2022. "How One Organization Aids the Deaf in Singapore." The Borgen Project. September 18, 2022.
https://borgenproject.org/deaf-in-singapore/.Berke, Jamie. 2023. "Name Signs in the Deaf Community." Very Well Health. Last updated May 4, 2023.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/using-name-signs-for-personal-names-1048725.Rochester Institute of Technology. 2023. "Milan Resolution (1880)." LEAD 306 Leadership in the Deaf Community - InfoGuides. Last updated October 9, 2023. https://infoguides.rit.edu/deafleader/milan.
RIT Libraries. n.d. "LEAD 306 Leadership in the Deaf Community: Milan Resolution 1880." Accessed April 12, 2024. https://infoguides.rit.edu/deafleader/milan#:~:text=It%20is%20commonly%20known%20as,of%20sign%20language%20in%20school.
Cheong, Mark, and Kua Chee Siong. 2021. "S'pore Association for the Deaf helps build children's confidence with sign language." The Straits Times. Accessed April 12, 2024. https://www.straitstimes.com/multimedia/photos/spore-association-for-the-deaf-helps-build-childrens-confidence-with-little-hands.
International Congress of the Deaf (ICED). 2010. "July 18-22, 2010 Vancouver, Canada." World Federation of the Deaf. https://wfdeaf.org/news/international-congress-of-the-deaf-iced-july-18-22-2010-vancouver-canada/.