From today until 7 October, it is China’s National Day Holidays. As
such, there are no students going for lessons. The good news is that we can
return back to the classroom in the College of International Education (which
is not as cold or draughty as the other classroom we went to) and continue our
Aircraft Propulsion Systems (APS) lessons there.
After our APS lesson, my classmates and I went over to the relatively
unoccupied canteen and had a good lunch. Normally when there are students
around, we see them eat and engage in friendly gossip. Some laugh, some snigger
and some sign.
No, I don’t mean signing papers, that kind of “sign”. Signing as in,
using their hands to communicate with each other. This is normally practiced by
the hearing impaired and you’d be surprised at how fast some of them can sign-
I’m in the Hi! Club (That’s short for Hearing Impaired Club) in Ngee Ann
Polytechnic, so trust me when I say they’re fast.
Although my signing skills are mediocre, I can recognize simple signs
for “yes” and “no”, stuff like that. However, when I observe the hearing
impaired students here in Tianjin sign, I have absolutely no idea what they are “talking” about.
The reason is obvious- They use a different set of signing. In
Singapore, we use our own local signing for certain things and we follow the
grammar structure of spoken English. The Tianjin students however, are Chinese,
and hence follow the style of spoken Chinese with their own set of signage.
I have done some research on Chinese sign language and was shocked by
what I found.
Before I continue, I’d just like to give a brief explanation- For
signing in English, if you don’t know what the sign is for a certain word, you
simply spell it out. For example, you don’t know (or can’t remember) how to
sign “cat” so you simply spell with your right hand “C-A-T”.
In Chinese, however, several words can have the same Pinyin (which enables you to pronounce
the word) but different tones (4, to be specific) with which to speak with. If
you pronounce wrongly, you could end up saying the wrong thing.
The American finger-spelling system we in Hi! Club use
Now this is where I am flabbergasted, the Chinese sign language has a
finger spelling system for certain strokes AND also for the pinyin. I’m guessing that with these 2
systems- the Chinese can choose to either “write” or spell out the word.
If the person chooses to spell out the pinyin, he/she must then indicate the specific tone (1 out of 4
tones) by blinking his/her eyes or by a light head movement. From all the
hearing impaired students that I have observed, I have yet to see one blink or
tilt the head while signing. Perhaps their signing vocabulary is so fluent that
they have no need to worry about spelling it out- Lucky them. Regrettably, I
have had no opportunity to ask them what certain signs represent but it is
rather encouraging to see that the hearing-impaired students are not hampered
and are enjoying themselves in the university.
The charts showing the fingerspelling of the strokes, Zhuyin, (on the left) and Pinyin spelling
In addition, for this blog entry, I have surfed YouTube for videos on
sign language and have found some to be very inspirational. I think that for
those of us who can hear, we should appreciate what we have.
Although I never really thought much about it until I came for this OIP
trip, I think that the Hi! Club is a good place to make friends with others and
open our eyes to the bigger world. We all may have things that we can or cannot
do but we’re all human- and that’s what that is common in every single one of
us.
Thanks for reading!
Best regards,
Marianne
Author’s Note:
References
All pictures are retrieved from http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2007/04/02/chinese-sign-language-fingerspelling
John. Chinese Sign Language:
Fingerspelling. Retrieved on 01 October 2012 from sinosplice website at http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2007/04/02/chinese-sign-language-fingerspelling
(01
Jan 2009). The Chinese Sign Language Culture. Retrieved on 01 October 2012 from
Mysterious China Blog at http://www.mysteriouschina.com/the-chinese-sign-language-culture/
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