this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
139 points (98.6% liked)

Asklemmy

43755 readers
1339 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I assume there must be a reason why sign language is superior but I genuinely don't know why.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've heard that because written English is phonetic - meaning it shows how the sounds are (approximately) - then for people who have always been deaf that doesn't make the same sense, and reading words is a bit like reading a bunch of telephone numbers and remembering what they mean.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I.e. the same as a programming language, which can be easily learned to be read at astounding speed... Also, written English is one of the least phonetic languages you could possibly find.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Not really. You can still sound out the phonemes in a programming language. Perhaps if the whole thing were perl memes. And while I agree English orthography is a mess, for "not phonetic" it holds no candle to Chinese.

Maybe Chinese is a better comparison, I hadn't thought of that.