People always say to learn spanish or request it as the number one language to learn. Don’t get me wrong, spanish is a great language but it gets too much glory. The Deaf community has not been getting the praise and help it needs for years and learning ASL will come a long way. Think about jobs. The majority of your coworkers will already know Spanish, you are likely to be in the few or even the only one to know a language other than Spanish. Wherever you are working, someone can come in that is Deaf and you will be able to help.

The Spanish language has been around for years and usually now everyone knows the basics of it. If you ask a person to say something in spanish, they might say hola, muy bien, or something random that they know. If you ask a person to sign something in ASL, they would form their hand in silly ways and do random things. This shows how many people know even the basics or how to say a couple words in Spanish and when it comes to ASL no one has a clue. Moving on from the comparison though, there are cases when knowing some type of ASL could be really beneficial. For example, like if a person is a teacher and their student has deaf parents, the person would not know how to communicate with the parents. Also at a job, if you have a group of deaf customers come in, if no one knows ASL how would you assist them.

The Deaf community is wonderful overall. Deaf culture has its own unique traditions, history, celebrations, and more, but most importantly they all connect through ASL. Valuing children who are deaf is the main focus now and going on into the future. They are going to pave the way for the Deaf community and it all starts with us learning some ASL.