International Sign
Real Life Experiences
You are welcome to email to Handspeak about your experience with how you communicate with foreigners. Messages are subject to editing.
Fingerspelling
"Some deaf people can communicate fluently in International Sign and/or gestures; however, when it comes to read a foreign fingespelling, they admittedly need to slow down a bit. But, there is an interesting trick. At the World Games for the Deaf in New Zealand in 1989, for example, an Australian (Auslan) and I as Canadian (Ameslan) talked in a mix of International Sign and manual gestures in normal speed. Whenever we struggled to understand at some points, then I would spell an English word in his two-handed British manual alphabet and he would spell an English word in my one-handed American manual alphabet. We could read each other fluently. In this case, we learned each other's manual alphabets beforehand, which would take about 15 minutes to learn a foreign manual alphabet. This is one of examples how we can overcome a communication barrier." -- Jolanta Lapiak, 1989.