Deaf Poetry

Recently after a meeting at the Kingdom Hall, I was able to have lunch with the visiting speaker and his wife.  This brother who gave the talk was Hearing, his wife was Hard of Hearing, much like I am, although she did not wear hearing aids.  Both have been attending sign language meetings for about 20 years, so both are very skilled in the language.

In the conversation, the subject of ASL and signing songs during our meetings came up.  The speaker asked me if I noticed that the last  song on Wednesday night, a brand new song, was signed in the ABC format of poetry.  I told him I did not notice it, but thought the song was odd and hard to sign.  He then demonstrated how the song was signed, using the ABC format.  Signing with this method would make the song easy to remember and fun to sign at the meeting.

 This song can be viewed on the jw.org website under American Sign Language (you can change the language at the top right of the page), find the picture of the Song Book, open up the link, then scroll down to the very last song on that download.  If you are at all familiar with ASL, you will see each letter shape signed as the song progresses.  The chorus of the song will be in the 1,2,3 format, so it will be signed 1,2,3,4,5,5,4,3,2,1.jw.org

This song made me  appreciate sign language so much more, as a REAL language, having actual poetry, not just words or facial expressions to get the point across.

There are other sign language poetic formats that the Watchtower Bible and Tract society have used in their songs.  One that I really enjoy watching is the use of only one handshape throughout the whole song.  One needs to be skilled in the language to invent a song or story using only one handshape or classifier.  This format was taught in my advanced ASL college class.

This is a quote from another blog about this poetic form of signing:  "A fun thing to do with the sign language alphabet is to make up an "ABC story." ABC stories use each letter of the sign alphabet to represent something. For example, the "A" handshape is used to "knock" on a door.  ABC stories are used as entertainment and as an educational tool to develop Deaf children's language. Deaf studies and sign language classes frequently include ABC stories. ABC stories are considered to be one aspect of ASL literature, or ASL storytelling."    http://deafpah.blogspot.com/2012/07/lots-of-asl-poetry-abc-123-stories.html