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My Language Is Not English: A Deaf Educator Answers JB Mitchell

I have taught American Sign Language at New York University since 1991. My credentials and history sit on the public record: first Deaf graduate of CUNY Lehman College in 1992, Master’s in Deafness Rehabilitation from NYU in 1997, SCPI rating of Superior Plus, Iowa School for the Deaf from first grade through twelfth, twenty-three years as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor for Deaf services at the New York State Department of Education, and in Spring 2023 the first Deaf dual tutorial instructor at NYU Gallatin, where one of the two tutorials I taught was Black Sign Language. I write today because a man on TikTok who calls himself an ASL Communication Coach has been telling a generation of young people that my language is English. It is not. Marlee Matlin has said so publicly, clearly, and with the moral authority she has earned across forty years of Deaf advocacy. JB Mitchell has responded by calling Marlee an actor rather than an educator. That is the move of a man who has run out of argument.

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Arm Angles in American Sign Language: The Textbook That Teaches What Other Textbooks Ignore

Watch any native signer and then watch an intermediate student. The difference is not in the handshapes. It is not in the facial expressions, though those matter. The difference lives in the arms. The native signer’s shoulders engage when emphasis requires it. The elbows extend and contract with meaning. The signing space expands for formal address and contracts for intimacy. The student, trained to focus on hands and face, moves through space as if the arms were merely transportation for the fingers. This is the gap that Arm Angles in American Sign Language addresses. It is the textbook we wished existed twenty years ago.

Arm Angles in American Sign Language by David Boles and Janna Sweenie

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ChatGPT Invents a New Language

As a Boles.ai experiment, I asked three AI Bots — Claude.ai and Gemini and ChatGPT — to create a language and then I asked them if the language was actually created by them or not. Because of the length of the responses, I created three separate articles demonstrating the language invention capabilities of each Bot. You can decide which language Bot was most effective and inventive. I used the same prompts for all three attempts.

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Gemini Invents a New Language

As a Boles.ai experiment, I asked three AI Bots — Claude.ai and Gemini and ChatGPT — to create a language and then I asked them if the language was actually created by them or not. Because of the length of the responses, I created three separate articles demonstrating the language invention capabilities of each Bot. You can decide which language Bot was most effective and inventive. I used the same prompts for all three attempts.

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Will The Metropolitan Opera Allow the Deaf to Sing?

[UPDATE: September 12, 2023; our ASL Opera Project website is now live! Join us there for new videos, translation updates, and for consultation concerning the right interpretation of Opera in American Sign Language!]

[UPDATE: July 11, 2023.  Janna and I met with the Metropolitan Opera to discuss heightened ASL interpreting for their performances. The meeting was positive, forward-thinking, and hopeful! We will soon update with more information! Here’s the July 11 update!]

My delightful wife Janna Sweenie and I are big lovers of opera. Opera is the pinnacle of all the Performing Arts — Painting, Acting, Voice, Costumes, Lights and Sets — and when put together, in unison, in an exaggerated and elevated performance, the entire world glows and resonates! We have always been dismayed that opera is not often, if ever, interpreted in American Sign Language for the Deaf like all Broadway shows are interpreted. Janna and I are currently working on our “Opera Project” where she will present ASL renderings of famous opera arias. We will place those performances online as proof-of-concept. This is a challenging, but rewarding, and complex academic process of interpretation and adaptation, and implementation.

Here’s my Boles.tv live stream discussion of the Deaf singing at The Met:

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Disparity Between Political Translation and Human Transliteration

Words are toxic and dangerous things. We currently have a Presidential contender who threatens his opponent with prison if he wins, and if he doesn’t win the election, then that means the election was rigged against him. That sort of clear and obvious threat against Democracy is not just craven and crass, but unwise — however, his threats are precise and clearly inform us all of his intentions and insanity.

We only need to travel back to the United Nations on October 12, 1960 and watch Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev take off his shoe and bang it on the podium while threatening to “bury us” all!

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Return of the Deaf-Mute: Our Next Deaf Culture Conversation

Did you know there’s a troubling, but rich, history using the term “Deaf-Mute” in America?  Janna and I have written a new book “conversation” about that pejorative label released by David Boles Books Writing & Publishing titled — Return of the Deaf-Mute: The Lost Legacy of the Greatest American Deaf Generation — and in our book, we examine the “Deaf-Mute” stereotype in history, its effect on common culture, and the role of human tolerance in society today. How did the “Deaf-Mute” label become such a colloquial monstrosity that it has repressed generations of Deaf people in America — just because it was a convenient, default, categorization that had nothing to do with context or fact of condition?

BUY NOW!

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A Romanov in a Pau Garden: A Glorious Last Moment in Living History

One sunny morning in Pau, one of the neighbors came to take some plants for his garden.  The elderly gentleman in the photograph on the right is Monsieur Romanov — a  descendant of the Romanov family, rulers of Russia from 1613 until the Russian Revolution in 1917.

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Comcast in the Philippines

I have had my share of joys and troubles with Comcast as my “Triple Play” provider, but I’ve never before experienced a total failure to communicate with a company — as I have this week — in trying to get my voice and cable modem replaced.

When you used to call Comcast customer support, you dialed an 800 number and you were then connected to the regional office that served your area.  Having that sort of local connection was important because, “Jersey Understands Jersey” and you could speak in cultural semaphores that clicked understanding that helped quicken resolutions to any technical or billing problem.

It now appears Comcast have outsourced all their technical support and billing to the Philippines, and that is causing a lot of widespread and furious grief for customers.  There isn’t just a cultural separation between the Philippines and the USA, but, like it or not, there is a language difference that often bears down on not understanding each other because of natural accents.

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Why I Only Speak Romanian to My Son

Toward the end of the Passover holiday, I was out at dinner with Chaim and Elizabeth at a friend’s home and was in the middle of telling Chaim that he had to wait only a little bit longer before food would be served, and someone decided that it was the perfect time (mid sentence) to ask me why it was that I chose to speak to Chaim only in Romanian. After I got over the initial shock that he could not seem to wait until I was finished with my sentence (perhaps he thought it was okay to interrupt because he didn’t understand me) I responded, and as I explained it occurred to me that it might be prudent to explain it here as well — for the record.

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