Anonymous asked:
deafaq answered:
Short answer: no, not necessarily.
Long answer: Consider the spoken English language. Not every person speaks the same way, right? Some people have lisps, or are very expressive, or are very sarcastic. Some people stutter, some people barely raise their voice enough to be heard, some people have an accent, etc. But as long as we can understand each other, there isn’t really (from a descriptive linguistic standpoint) a “right” or a “wrong” way to speak English.
The same holds true for ASL! Some people sign really fast, some people sign “sloppily” or “slur” their signing. On bad pain days when I’ve only got use of one hand, I sign one-handed. Some people, like you perhaps, aren’t as expressive as others (or expressive at all), and that’s okay! Some neurodivergent people have what’s called a “flat affect,” which basically means that they’re not so expressive, and sure, it might take a little extra effort on your part to convey your emotions or on your conversational partners part to understand your intention, but that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong or should stop learning ASL.
As long as people can understand you and you’re signing to your best ability, your specific, unique brand of ASL is perfectly good!
-Mod C
Thank you for posting this, I’m hearing and I’ve taken two years of ASL and I’ve always been very self conscious about the fact that I’m not very expressive with my signing or I’m not expressive ‘enough’. And it makes me worry and think, maybe I won’t be able to become fluent because of it, and it’s always been a nasty little thought in the back of my mind.
So thank you for posting this and talking about it, it’s helped me very much.
-Admin L
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