Deaf People Share Communication Mishaps When Signing With Drunk People

Hand Giggles

My mom would always get giggly and have a hard time getting through a story clearly. Kind of like when hearing people are laughing and it's hard for them to get to their point.

Also just general sloppiness lol. Signs bleed into each other and you have to repeat what you're signing more.

Switching It Up

My sister is HoH with degenerative hearing and will eventually be completely deaf, but when she's drunk she will switch between verbally speaking and signing.

It's hilarious when she's around people other than her husband/our family and they don't sign because she'll get increasingly frustrated when people can't keep up with the signing and verbal words until she remembers most people don't sign. Then she flushes all the way up to her ears and immediately drunkenly stumbles away from the social situation.

siaharra

Act It Out

My cousin is deaf and tells me of how she forgot the sign for "Slap" so completely unprompted, hauled off and slapped the guy she was chatting with and then kept going.

""So this cat is waving around all like a wizard, then the other cat jus'.... jus'..."" POW ""to the little one an... ... ...what?""

Also, dropping things she's holding in order to sign, and signing to people she knows don't sign then getting confused/annoyed and signing slowly and very carefully instead of grabbing her phone to write. It's like "no, dummy, LIKE THIIIIIS ""WAaaaa-TER""

ichigoli

Same Answer

Hearing person here, but conversational in ASL. One time I meant to sign "where do you work?", instead I signed "where do you f-ck?"

The answer to both was "at home".

rakmode

Babbling Nonsense With Your Knuckles

Usually they just babbled like it doesn't mean anything just straight up nonsense, like "mother chicken b!tch friday taxi".

Apparently he wanted a ride because he couldn't drive.

poor dude was drunk.

ghigoli

Speak Up!

After a few drinks my deaf colleagues sometimes sign to other deaf people speaking in sign language "sorry, can't hear you".

RyanB____

As a child I was mute and one time I got really angry and was signing to my dad with really large gestures and he signed back "don't yell at me". Nowadays I sometimes just sign at him "don't yell at me" to make fun of him.

hell00zz

Birth A Poop

My in-laws are hearing impaired. In-laws are from Taiwan. In-laws sign a mixture of Chinese and Taiwanese sign. In-laws move to the US 30+ years ago, and learned ASL. Father in-law decided to teach me his version of sign, a mixture of all three languages. Since the family is the only people I sign to, it's the only sign I know.

Now to answer your question: It's a lot easier to sign to the Wifey in certain venues. Bars, clubs, over long distances... Wifey was holding our seats, and we were signing back and forth while I tried to make my way to the bar to get a few drinks. I could tell that a few people who knew sign were looking at our conversation, and wondering what in the hell we were saying to each other.

I am sure some figured out that it was a foreign language, but I could tell a few were captivated. Thinking I would get a few laughs, I told the Wifey that I had to use the restroom. Specifically, I have to poop. And that's when they lost it. As it turns out, the Chinese/Taiwanese sign for poop is the same as the ASL sign for giving birth. Pretty much translates.

Made some good friends that night, and they agreed to start using the sign for birth for number two.

DownRangeDistillery

Just...One Finger...

I am not deaf but I took ASL in college. When I got to my second year of ASL we had to go to "deaf immersion events" to sigh with deaf people to learn about the deaf culture. One of these events was at a bar. I have had a few drinks and I signing away with some deaf people I made friends with in the past. I am killing it in my sign langue, finger spelling like a champ and sighing just as fast as anyone there. We are having a great time telling jokes and drinking when this amazingly hot women comes up to our group. She was about my age in her early 20s was my guess.

She signs "hello, my name is Ashly it's nice to meet you."

I sign back "hello, it's nice to meet you."

I see everyone's eyes get as big as dinner plates. And this look of absolute horror crosses her face. She turns around and leaves. Turns out I didn't say "hello, my name is madevilfish it's nice to meet you." I said, "hello, my name is madevilfish it's nice to f-ck you."

The sign for meet and f-ck is the difference of a finger.

madevilfish