aegipan-omnicorn:

strangestructures:

fierceawakening:

andreashettle:

askclint:

mugasofer:

mad-yet-glad:

just-shower-thoughts:

Do Deaf people understand puns? Are there some combinations of sign language which are hilariously ambigious?

Signing the word milk when moving it pas your eyes is “pasteurized milk” (past your eyes milk)

That’s appalling. Have a like.

Make your pinky “jump” on the back of your other hand. That’s IHOP.

One Deaf American anthropologist I’ve met likes to sign “anthropology” as “ant throw apology”.

The four puns listed above are all examples of puns based on English words. The first two are puns I’ve seen used in American Sign Language (ASL), the “IHOP” pun is not one that I’ve seen personally so I’m not sure which signed language it is from. Though due to the use of the letter “i” (the pinky finger) as part of the sign, and the fact that the pun only makes sense if you know English, I suspect it must be ASL also.  (British Sign Language uses a COMPLETELY different finger spelling system, so the same pun in that language would have to be very different.)

Now here is a purely sign-based pun:

The usual ASL sign for “understand” basically involves holding your hand near your forehead and flicking your “pointer” finger away from your thumb. Sometimes, if a Deaf person is only understanding a tiny amount of what is being explained to them, they might jokingly substitute the use of the smaller (pinky) finger as a way of representing a small amount of comprehension.

Another one I’ve never seen in person, but have heard described: There is apparently a film that Deaf people made of themselves signing in ASL back in the 1920s (a historical film, preserved like various other historical films from the Deaf community at Gallaudet University). And in this film, one Deaf man apparently says to another, “I hope it will not be long before I see you again.” The usual sign for “long” in ASL basically involves using your pointer finger to trace the length of your other arm. But in this film, the man raised his foot and started making the sign for “long” by tracing his finger all the way up the length of his leg, and only then continued tracing his finger up his arm. So this is basically a really exaggerated way of making the sign for “long”.

I am curious to know if there is anyone reading this familiar with sign puns in any of the other 200 or 300 signed languages used around the world who could share more examples?

“I understand a little” was great but “loooooooooong” cracked me right up.

In German Sign
Language, a form of poetry involves finger spelling a word while
using the letters to “mime” the world. So for example, you could
spell golf (same spelling in German) and move the g (index finger
pointed downwards) like a golf club, then the o would be the ball
flying away, on the way down you turn it into an l to represent these
lines you see in comics to show movement and it would land in an f.

In my ASL 101 class, when I was in university, I learned an American version of that same “pun,” only the “g” was setting the tee in the ground, the “o” balanced on it, the ‘L’ was the swinging golf club, and the “f” was the ball flying through the air – to wit:

[Image description: a collage of different hands fingerspelling “golf” in the ASL manual alphabet. Description ends]

Oh, and back then, when I was practicing my sign in chatting, and I had had a particularly long day, and was tired, I’d exaggerate “Long” by tracing my arm up to the shoulder, then switching hands to trace back down the other arm, before finishing the phrase with “day”.