Why use sign language, wouldn’t it have been easier to use a pen and paper rather then having to learn how to sign?
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A significant number of deaf people are born deaf or with hearing difficulties. It’s a lot easier for a person to learn a language (sign or vocal) than it is to learn to write.
A child will learn to speak before writing so they can reference the sound of a word they know with the written language.
A person born deaf can’t hear by definition and therefore has no baseline for phonics. They are forced to learn visually, so learning to write can be quite difficult for them. It is even more difficult if they don’t have a language baseline to start from.
Speaking in sign is also considerably faster than writing and much more efficient. Once you understand the basics many signs are actually pretty intuitive and it is a very expressive language. If you don’t know a sign for a word you can make one up and the other person will likely get what you are trying to say. Trying to describe a concept in writing is far more difficult, especially for a child.
You also need to carry a pen and paper with you everywhere which is inconvenient. This is somewhat moot because not everyone speaks sign language either, but this is no different than someone speaking a different language.
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