Reply #12: The point is communication

[demobabe]

What you're saying in your post is a totally different (but important) point than whether ASL will "die" or not. You are coming from a different direction than me: I am getting that your concern is to be able to understand and access English fully instead of ending up grammatically constructing sentences like Yoda. And that's important to be functional in society.

But where I'm coming from is that I've got a hearing 20 month old that is speech delayed, and ASL is allowing him to communicate and is also helping him learn the English words. We'll play with a ball, sign ball, and he'll say something like "bowww". He can't form the English words to talk to me yet, and we started ASL after he wasn't using any language at all, not even the ma-ma da-da hearing babies typically do at 9-12 months of age. He has a sign language vocabulary of around 75 words at this point, which is many more words than an average 20 month old speaks.

ASL and Cued Speech are both tools towards communication - which is the point. Sure, some things work better than others and I can imagine a Cochlear Implant would be great.

But for us, it's a huge milestone for our baby to be able to tell us that he specifically wants milk, water, or a drink. Or he can tell us that he's hurt, and where it hurts or that something is too hot - bath, food, sidewalk. Otherwise the communication would be limited to a very small person looking concerned, and whining or crying. For us, this is amazing.

You wanted a study about ASL being helpful, here is one:

A study of 140 families funded by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development showed that hearing children who were exposed to signing (in addition to speech) as babies have IQ scores averaging 12 points higher than the scores of the control group that didn't have additional language input. Increased language acquisition results in a measurable increase in intelligence.

That is from http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/languagedeprivation.htm

And if you want a whole slew of studies and benefits for teaching children ASL, you can find it in this PDF:

http://www.signingtime.com/benefits/STResearch_Summary.pdf

But I completely undestand what you're saying. Our baby will eventually learn English, and signs will most likely fall to the side. But like I said, it's a tool that's very helpful to us. Every tool has it's limits; you wouldn't use a hammer on everything. Even English itself is limited - it is also a tool.