Would it be possible for me to talk twice as much?

November 26, 2007 8:55 AM

If you are good at both talking and signing, to what extent can you have two simultaneous and different conversations going at the same time?
posted by uandt to writing & language (16 comments total)

It's every bit as easy as taking a pen in each hand, listening to two people talking and writing down what they're each saying simultaneously.

(In other words, there are very few people whose brains are capable of this.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:06 AM on November 26, 2007

It's easy as pie without your corpus callosum.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:16 AM on November 26, 2007

It's easy as pie without your corpus callosum.

Is it? I've never heard of anyone studying sign language with people with a cut corpus callosum, but from what I understand, the right side of the brain has a huge problem forming words from what it sees, while the left side can. So even if the left side was carrying on a conversation, I doubt the right side would be able to carry on another conversation in sign language (although it might be able too)
posted by delmoi at 9:22 AM on November 26, 2007

You'd have a heck of a time doing it with just one message, since ASL isn't English (although there are dialects of ASL that allow this). Doing it with two separate messages, I can't imagine, although I could imagine receiving in one and expressing in another, if you didn't mind being slow and possibly making mistakes.

I won't say it can't be done, because then tomorrow there'd be an FPP about some crazy who does this every day, and has been on Oprah or whatever.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 9:32 AM on November 26, 2007

I don't buy the writing analogy. At least for me reading and writing is based on phonetics and requires auditory processing. I cant hear shit when I concentrate on what I'm reading.

I don't have any of those problems while watching closely what other people are doing. While parts used for things like lexical lookups are probably the same for signing and talking I imagine that many others not. Quick googling only turns up data on brainscans being done on deaf people but I want to know how different signing is from talking for people that can hear.
posted by uandt at 10:23 AM on November 26, 2007

If I'm playing guitar, I can't really talk at the same time, if what I'm playing requires me to focus on it (ie its not something I have memorized and can do on autopilot). I can listen and understand just fine, however.

I would extrapolate that to mean that there is no way you could speak two different things with your hands and your mouth at the same time.
posted by jpdoane at 10:57 AM on November 26, 2007

I have nothing to offer but anecdotes, but based on my own (admittedly limited, but still greater than that of most hearing Americans) experiences with signing, it feels exactly the same as learning any other language. Stress or nervousness can even make me "stammer" when signing, just as I do when speaking-- I know what sign/word I want to form/say, but my hands/mouth just won't do it. It really is the same thing as far as I can tell, and I stand by my previous answer. You may be able to use your hands and your mouth simultaneously, but you only have one brain to share between them.

As another experiment, try carrying on a spoken conversation and typing something unrelated (say, song lyrics that you've memorized) at the same time. You can probably do it, but I'll bet you can't do it quickly or well.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:58 AM on November 26, 2007

(say, song lyrics that you've memorized)

I doubt this would be a good test, because accessing something from memory is quite different then actively synthsizing language
posted by jpdoane at 11:23 AM on November 26, 2007

quite different from actively
posted by jpdoane at 11:23 AM on November 26, 2007

Only comparable datapoint.
During Interpreter training many years ago (Sp-Eng), one technique we had to master was to carry on a conversation in our target language (Sp) while simultaneously listening to a conversation in our mother tongue (Eng). We had to produce a written memo of both conversations. Getting 80% accuracy of subject matter, especially hard factual information, after a year's hard training was considered a huge success. To this day I still have that skill, although nowhere near as accurate.
posted by Wilder at 11:31 AM on November 26, 2007

Another barrier would be that there are ASL signs that require mouth movement and facial expressions--for instance, the hand movement for "sweet" and "cute" are the same, but the mouth shape is different. There are other signs that incorporate facial expression as well; "Wow" comes to mind, as well as "dream," "hope," "who," "why," "what?"--hmmm, as I think about it, there are a lot. You probably could speak intelligibly in ASL without using facial expression, but nuance would be lost. So it's not even as simple as using your hands for one language and your mouth for the other.

That said, when I used to work at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, where there is a sizable group of deaf women on the crew, I have sometimes been talking orally with someone who is also fluent in ASL and had her have a brief side conversation with a deaf woman passing by without interrupting our conversation, sort of at the level of "Hey there, you going to lunch? OK, see you there." Nothing too deep or extended.

Interpreters "buffer" what they're hearing--translating from speech to ASL, for instance, they listen a bit, then start interpreting, so they can hear enough to not make mistakes--they don't interpret word-by-word, but try to express the ideas. So they're hearing one thing, storing it, maintaining a sense of where it is in the flow of ideas, and at the same time they're signing the thing they heard ten seconds ago. Not sure how that skill relates to the one you're asking about, but I think it is similar to Wilder's example from Spanish-English interpretation.

You could ask this question on a discussion forum for ASL interpreters and see what they have to say.
posted by not that girl at 12:01 PM on November 26, 2007

I'll ask the interpreter in my Wednesday class. I'm sure she'll get a kick out of it.
posted by sperose at 12:53 PM on November 26, 2007

Don't know about signing, but I find it easy enough to talk and type two (or more) separate conversations. You need to be a very good touch-typist for this though.
posted by ysabet at 3:40 PM on November 27, 2007

The interpreter said that it can be done, but it would require and extraordinary amount of concentration. She said it was similar to the whole patting your head while rubbing your stomach kind of thing.
posted by sperose at 7:45 PM on November 28, 2007

Great! Thank you all.

* Pats head, rubs stomach *
posted by uandt at 7:57 AM on November 29, 2007

My girlfriend who is taking ASL interpretation agrees that it can be done with some concentration, but it is considered rude in many circles of deaf culture (I know you didn't ask that, just thought it was a neat thing to throw in).
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:28 PM on December 2, 2007