DeafDigest Mid-Week edition - February 9, 2021
-- a village's two unusual things about sign language
Adamrobe is a tiny village in Ghana of 1400 hearing
and 30 deaf residents. It is unusual for two reasons -
deaf population was about 140 in the early sixties;
the village chief made it a rule that deaf cannot
marry another deaf - in an effort to bring down
the deaf population. For better or worse, this is
the reason deaf population is lower nowadays.
Second reason is that sign language is used
by all residents, both deaf and hearing.
In Martha's Village, hearing people sometimes
(not all the time) used signs with other
hearing people.
-- a grammar that is alive
What is alive grammar? Deaf people watch the
interpreters' faces for facial expressions
and for lipreading, while at the same time
watching the signs. Alive grammar is
sometimes called facial grammar.
-- AI (artificial intelligence) and the deaf danger
Many social media platforms use AI (artificial intelligence)
to trap bad words and bad phrases, but for the deaf, it may
trap the "bad" word and may block it from being posted.
An example would be - "I am a woman who is deaf" and the
AI may think it is a bad phrase that would be insulting.
AI engineers are very aware of it and are hard at
work improving on better formulas to know the
difference between "I am a woman who is deaf" (good)
and "he is tone-deaf" (bad)
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