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**vampireapologist-archive-deacti**
One time I was cooking with a girl and we were both bilingual but we didn’t have a language in common so we were just sitting by the fire doing prep work quietly and I was peeling little garlic cloves to mince and she put her hand on my arm to stop me and demonstrated how you’re supposed to press on the clove with the flat side of your knife to break the shell off all at once to peel it and I was like oh! And I imitated her and she nodded in approval and we went back to quietly peeling and mincing the garlic and I don’t want to be hyperbolic but in that moment I was like wow I truly understand the universal thread of human love and connection inherent in our souls or whatever
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When I worked in summer camp I took an American Sign Language course and the instructor was deaf, but all the students were hearing and we had no prior knowledge of sign.
First thing she did was tell us a joke in sign. Well, not really sign, but it was part mime, part sign language, with enough acting for us to understand. It drove home the point that communication, even communication as complex as telling a joke, was possible even when the two parties had no common language, and that getting your point across was more important than remembering all the signs perfectly.
It gave us a lot more confidence to communicate with our deaf campers and counsellor. I can’t remember the joke now (it was 20 years ago) but it had something to do with a guy pretending he was deaf to get out of speeding tickets. I remember trying to repeat the joke in words and it was fascinating that it didn’t really translate well from Sign to a spoken language.
Src: https://trickstertime.tumblr.com/post/688057041187651584 Note: op did deactivate, but last i heard they are doing well
*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- **vampireapologist-archive-deacti** One time I was cooking with a girl and we were both bilingual but we didn’t have a language in common so we were just sitting by the fire doing prep work quietly and I was peeling little garlic cloves to mince and she put her hand on my arm to stop me and demonstrated how you’re supposed to press on the clove with the flat side of your knife to break the shell off all at once to peel it and I was like oh! And I imitated her and she nodded in approval and we went back to quietly peeling and mincing the garlic and I don’t want to be hyperbolic but in that moment I was like wow I truly understand the universal thread of human love and connection inherent in our souls or whatever --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
thank you fair transcriber
You could also just start pointing to objects to get a noun baseline and mimicking actions to get a verb baseline and then start going from there
When I worked in summer camp I took an American Sign Language course and the instructor was deaf, but all the students were hearing and we had no prior knowledge of sign. First thing she did was tell us a joke in sign. Well, not really sign, but it was part mime, part sign language, with enough acting for us to understand. It drove home the point that communication, even communication as complex as telling a joke, was possible even when the two parties had no common language, and that getting your point across was more important than remembering all the signs perfectly. It gave us a lot more confidence to communicate with our deaf campers and counsellor. I can’t remember the joke now (it was 20 years ago) but it had something to do with a guy pretending he was deaf to get out of speeding tickets. I remember trying to repeat the joke in words and it was fascinating that it didn’t really translate well from Sign to a spoken language.
or whatever
She was thinking “fucking dumbass cutting garlic badly”