On Friday I visited a gathering of the Auckland Deaf Society, on the invitation of a friend who wanted to return some comics to me before I leave the city. Getting ready to move can take you to many unexpected places, and teach you interesting new things. Last weekend it was how many small children can fit into a tiny tree in Manurewa. This weekend it was the correct sign language for “ginger beer”. Apparently New Zealand has a special sign just for beer, but for ginger beer you prefix it with the sign for the letter G. Much like English, only more efficient.
I anticipated some difficulty learning any signs, as I am not naturally gifted in the department of kinesthetic memory. I had to give up learning dancing years ago, because I kept holding everyone up asking for everything we’d learnt from the beginning to be taught to me again. I am capable of forgetting several weeks’ worth of dance steps in under half an hour. If you ever need anything forgotten quickly, you could not go too far wrong by expressing it to me in the form of interpretive dance. So I prepared for my visit by buying pens and notebooks. At first I apologised to a few people for my “paper hands”, but eventually gave this up as it turns out not to be particularly witty when you write it down, and I suspect it’s one of those things that everyone thinks they’re the first person to come up with when they really aren’t.
In any case, I managed to learn the alphabet reasonably quickly, and some basics like “yes”, “no”, “thank you”, “hooray” and “President of the Auckland Deaf Society”. I’m pretty sure that last one was actually a generic sign for any kind of president of anything, but I wasn’t certain of its scope, so I restricted myself to using it in the same context I first learnt it. I have found that it is best not to try to be to inventive on your first day learning a new language.
The main coordination problem I experienced was constantly forgetting to move my lips for the benefit of people whose lip-reading abilities were far beyond my capacity to comprehend. My lip-reading is worse than my dance-remembering.
It turns out that when deaf people gather, they do the following things:
- Drink beer
- Play pool
- Watch rugby on telly
- Discuss the plans for the new Deaf Society premises that will soon be built
No doubt there were many further topics of discussion that escaped my comprehension, but the new building did seem to be a big one. The plans did look suitably impressive.
The main thing I had not considered were the special measures necessary when someone needs to address a roomful of deaf people collectively. At the Auckland Deaf Society this is achieved by means of a large orange light to attract attention, and a raised podium on which the speaker stands in order to be seen over the crowd. I restrained myself from observing how clever this seemed, as it’s presumably not really any more clever than ringing a bell and raising your voice. But I was impressed anyway.