Deafness

[Fronslin]

Was talking about this over a skype chat and was talking about how our next IC family member was going to be born deaf.

As far as I know, in medieval times, there is no sign language. So we were discussing the possiblity of making one up that only we would know, but I don't know if that would be allowed. Kind of like finding a way to communicate? If there already a alteran sign language I think that would be amazing.

Do you guys think that deafness is hard to RP?
@RexTom

 

[Sadko]

It probably is, unless of course your character reacts only to **s in the chat. XD

 

[Baron]

Give them a piece of chalk so people can use it to write them messages.

 

[RexJen]

Give them a piece of chalk so people can use it to write them messages.

Thats /one/ way to solve it xD

 

[mokwar]

Amy was once deaf.
I used book and ink to talk.

 

[Michcat]

Hmm...

One of my characters is child character who is currently growing deafer by the day (Bad ear infection left unnoticed, gets pretty bad in small children >_<). Her mother was the first to realize something was wrong, and even then it took them a while- She'll probably be too hard of hearing to really pick up talking well enough, let alone writing- Although we'll see how things go!

A while back I read an interesting article on a boy in a third world country who was born deaf- He never said a word, never heard anything and only really did basic tasks directed by an odd sort of hand-signals him and his father had concocted. It was really interesting and I think gives some insight to how being deaf might impact someone in medieval times, where not everyone learns how to write and they probably don't have any resources available to even figure out what writing means if you can't understand what people are talking at you.

food for thought

 

[Deash12]

Remember back in the day, Ced and Dayter developed a nice ol' sign language composed of complex gestures and signs.
Only they know it, though.

 

[7632]

Remember back in the day, Ced and Dayter developed a nice ol' sign language composed of complex gestures and signs.
Only they know it, though.

I remember Ced... does that count?

 

[dUMMY]

WHAT?

 

[Somnastra]

A while back I read an interesting article on a boy in a third world country who was born deaf- He never said a word, never heard anything and only really did basic tasks directed by an odd sort of hand-signals him and his father had concocted. It was really interesting and I think gives some insight to how being deaf might impact someone in medieval times, where not everyone learns how to write and they probably don't have any resources available to even figure out what writing means if you can't understand what people are talking at you.

*puts linguistics hat on*

So that is probably an artifact of the fact that the father was not deaf, or did not know a full sign-language. In fact the acquisition schema for visual languages (signing is the best example, but written language can fall under this, too) is very very similar (to the point of being nigh-on indistinguishable) to that of spoken language. We're all primed for it, but we start with nothing.

How do babies figure out that the sounds their mother is making at them have meaning, after all?