By the end of the interview I'd been convinced to sign up.
I’ve learnt languages before – French in Canada, before high school, then on exchange, and I learnt Italian in primary school, albeit very little of it.
I pulled together some Bahasa Indonesia while living in Jakarta and tried learning Russian with Duolingo last year, preparing for a months-long trip which never happened.
But you know what? Sign language has been the most fun to learn and, honestly, it’ll be the most useful of all the languages I’ve picked up.
The banning of international travel has shown us just how useless European languages are – are you going to use French or German on anything other than a gap year?
Closer to home, you’ll use Indonesian in Bali or while ordering mi goreng on a Friday night, while Asian languages in general would get more use in Australia – but sign language helps overcome a barrier which otherwise can’t be breached.
Lip reading isn’t the panacea those who can hear think it is. If you’re watching TV on mute, can you understand everything perfectly? No? Why would you expect a deaf person to?
Even knowing the alphabet in sign language helps bridge that gap without the need for pen and paper.
Do we all need to be as fluent as translators standing next to Dan Andrews or Scott Morrison? No.
Would learning basic sign language help most people? Absolutely.
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