Based on the Deaf actor's movie in post production listed here, CODA, which means child of deaf adults, I'm assuming he is Deaf in real life. I assumed that anyway, but his bio here doesn't specify. His signing in the movie was smooth, though simplified for the character.
The movie was set in the fifties and the thinking in Deaf education was very backward as depicted in the film. If he was sent to an oral school, how did he learn to sign? From the Deaf kids with Deaf parents (and the Deaf adults if there were any) of course!
Oral schools could not squash sign language and the kids signed in stairwells and in the bathrooms, wherever they wouldn't be seen. So the scene in the stairwell was spot on.
The teacher was wrong. Sign language is a full language, not a pidgin, but English does make it in and as depicted in the scene where he tells her the two of them will create signs if they don't know the sign for something and it'll be between them, that is true. They're called home signs. Then he created a sign for lightening bug.
Anyway, a nice, pleasant little movie that got a lot of things about being Deaf in the fifties right.
I'm married to a Deaf man. They are not magical!
The movie was set in the fifties and the thinking in Deaf education was very backward as depicted in the film. If he was sent to an oral school, how did he learn to sign? From the Deaf kids with Deaf parents (and the Deaf adults if there were any) of course!
Oral schools could not squash sign language and the kids signed in stairwells and in the bathrooms, wherever they wouldn't be seen. So the scene in the stairwell was spot on.
The teacher was wrong. Sign language is a full language, not a pidgin, but English does make it in and as depicted in the scene where he tells her the two of them will create signs if they don't know the sign for something and it'll be between them, that is true. They're called home signs. Then he created a sign for lightening bug.
Anyway, a nice, pleasant little movie that got a lot of things about being Deaf in the fifties right.
I'm married to a Deaf man. They are not magical!