I first started learning American Sign Language shortly before I became a teenager, from a hearing friend at church whose mother was deaf.

Their household used ASL by default, with my friend growing up and learning it parallel to learning English. As a frequent overnight visitor, I took to learning ASL like the language nerd I didn’t yet know I was.

I told friends I was learning ASL because it was so cool my friend and I could have secret conversations. But that’s just what I told othet kids, because I knew they would not likely understand the real reason.

Talking to my friend’s mother (and my friend and his siblings) in ASL was the equivalent of visiting a parallel culture, with all the richness and beauty that entails.

Years later I would have the same experience learning French, German, and Russian. You don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t truly understand that works of art can’t be translated until you acquire enough cultural knowledge to read them in the original and meet the real thing.

By the way, can I make a suggestion about your title? I think you’re probably limiting readership by not putting the subject of the article in the title. I almost didn’t click, because I was frankly a bit put off by the title.

I only clicked because I saw that the Fourth Wave had published it, and I trust their editorial judgment.

I was pleasantly surprised when I did click to see that the article was about deafness and ASL. That pleasant surprise is probably not helping you with readership, though.

People are much more likely to click when they know what the article is about.