{"id":5345,"date":"2020-04-22T18:44:28","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T14:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/?p=5345"},"modified":"2020-04-22T18:44:29","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T14:44:29","slug":"sign-language-using-it-for-more-than-just-talking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/sign-language-using-it-for-more-than-just-talking\/","title":{"rendered":"Sign Language: Using It For More Than Just Talking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Malak Ibrahim may not have hearing issues, but she was determined to learn a sign language and sing popular songs using this medium. The 21-year-old is very invested in this because she is an advocate of inclusion that helps the lives of people with hearing impairment. And she is doing it one song at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was sort of a spontaneous decision as the summer was around the corner when she decided to learn the American Sign Language out of pure&nbsp;curiosity.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The American Sign Language is among the 300 available sign languages for deaf and hard of hearing people. It involves hand movements, facial gestures, and certain body movements, according to the website of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication&nbsp;Disorders.&nbsp;<br><br>It is the most widely used sign language, with&nbsp;250,000 to&nbsp;500,000 people speaking it in Canada and the U.S.A. alone, according to a report published by the&nbsp;Gallaudet Research Institute.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When she first tried signing her favorite songs, she decided to film herself doing so and later posted it on her Instagram account. \u201cWhen Tyler the Creator\u2019s album \u2018Igor\u2019 came out, I thought of how I would sign his song \u2018Earthquake\u2019. Then I started doing it and decided that I\u2019m&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;take a video of it. I did it and it turned out good and people were really interested in it, so I started doing more,\u201d she said in a video call.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls src=\"https:\/\/www.mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-content\/uploads\/Video-1.mov\"><\/video><figcaption>Malak Ibrahim\u2019s latest ASL music video, covering the song \u2018Lost in Yesterday\u2019 by Tame Impala. March 14th, 2020, @frizzyhairedchick on Instagram.&nbsp;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe support at first was mostly from my friends and then afterward, deaf people started to know about it and would tell me that they really like my content,&#8221; she said. &#8220;One of my friends told me that she really loved my work because her sister has down syndrome and the best way to communicate with her was sign language. So that drove me to continue,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ibrahim also posts educational ASL videos on her&nbsp;TikTok&nbsp;account that teaches people how to sing the alphabet. \u201cI\u2019m hoping to show people how to say colors, emotions, animals, all these types of things.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls src=\"https:\/\/www.mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-content\/uploads\/Video-2.mp4\"><\/video><figcaption>Malak Ibrahim\u2019s video on&nbsp;TikTok&nbsp;teaches viewers how to sign the alphabet in ASL, with the video having over 24,000 views. January 20th, 2020, @lukazowski&nbsp;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Nada&nbsp;Shaheen, an instructor for ASL, was Ibrahim\u2019s mentor at the Pomegranate Institute and she considers her as one of her best students. \u201cWhat Malak is doing is very interesting, she has my support and she reaches out whenever she needs me. I feel like it&#8217;s a different approach to mix between the hearing people and the deaf community, especially for the hard of hearing people because I feel like they\u2019re lost between these two worlds,\u201d she said in a phone call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shaheen&nbsp;said that two sign language institutes are now available in the U.A.E.&nbsp;\u201cBefore I started learning ASL, I had a passion for languages and I found that ASL was very interesting.&nbsp;I found it difficult to learn Arabic sign language because it was a relatively new language in the deaf community, so I went for the American sign language although it wasn\u2019t available in the country back then. I went for online courses, and I really got into it and started meeting deaf people and it kicked off my career.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Caroline\u00a0Metersky, 20, student of Rehabilitation Services and Deaf Services at Stephen F Austin State University in Texas, was born deaf in both her ears and doesn\u2019t refer to ASL music video covers when learning a new song. \u201cIf I want to learn or understand a song I haven\u2019t heard before, I refer to lyric videos or captioned music videos. Then I kind of \u2018study\u2019 the lyrics over time,\u201d she said in an interview over text messages.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With ASL being her first language,&nbsp;Metersky&nbsp;also speaks English and has one cochlear implant in her left ear, \u201cI know that my parents taught me how to read and write at an earlier age than other kids, so by the time I was able to read and write, the hearing kids were able to. It was difficult because I couldn\u2019t \u2018sound it out\u2019 while learning how to read like hearing kids can. Sign was used with me from infancy, they started teaching me English when I was barely a toddler,\u201d she said.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ibrahim encourages others to learn sign language because it helps with the inclusion of deaf and hard of hearing communities. \u201cIt\u2019s really easy to sign, it just takes a lot of practice. I\u2019m pretty sure a lot of people to this day bully the deaf and hard of hearing people, which really saddens me because we can\u2019t live in this world while ostracizing some people. Learning sign language would help these people come out and start talking more.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls src=\"https:\/\/www.mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-content\/uploads\/Video-3.mov\"><\/video><figcaption>At an event held by Pomegranate Institute in Dubai, Malak Ibrahim signs the song \u2018Happy\u2019 by Pharrell Williams to hard of hearing, deaf, and hearing people. January 2020, @frizzyhairedchick<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Edited by: Raghad Murad <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Malak Ibrahim may not have hearing issues, but she was determined to learn a sign&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[48],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5345"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5351,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345\/revisions\/5351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}