Finally, a connection between Tagalog (and Russian) and ASL

A common theme in my musings is comparing and contrasting my two language learning experiences.

Tagalog came easily to me. I was immersed in the language. Somehow, I knew that language was the key to connecting with the people. I could live in Manila my whole life with no effect unless I could communicate with the people around me on a deep and sincere level. I learned a lot about how to learn a language quickly, with the help of the Spirit.

When I came home, I expected my life to continue to have Tagalog in it. I returned college in Logan, UT, which has approximately 0 Filipinos, and didn't really speak Tagalog for years. Then we moved to Maryland, and I found myself in a great Filipino community. I started interpreting for church. I helped several elderly Filipinas in our ward. I bought ube macapuno ice cream and Silver Swan Soy Sauce.

Marriner served a mission in Ukraine. He learned Russian and Russian Sign Language. For obvious reasons, he continued to study Russian (instead of RSL) when he came home. He took classes all the way through his PhD.

But we taught our kids ASL. Why? Because we tried learning Russian, but it was frustrating to be on such different levels, because it's tough to teach your kids a language they don't hear/see in use, because Spanish would be so useful, but it's a Latin language, and couldn't we come up with something more linguistically interesting than that? But mostly because of a poke from the Holy Ghost.

For the last few years, I've sorta wondered why God would invest so much into teaching us Russian and Tagalog, only to have us switch to ASL later.

This morning, I got a little insight into one benefit from learning Tagalog before I learned ASL. A friend wrote a note to our family, and mentioned the difficulties with cultural appropriation and insensitivity that sometimes happen when hearing people enter the Deaf culture, thanking us for our efforts to be genuine. And I know we've made plenty of mistakes and inadvertently hurt feelings. But I realized that my experiences joining Filipino culture through learning and speaking their language taught me how to approach another culture in an appropriate way. I think that people often join the Deaf community in a condescending way - they want to help the poor deaf people. For us, it was much more as if we'd moved to Manila or Kyiv - we were just there, we were learning the language so we could be participating members of the community, and we hope we have something to offer.

Now that I've written it out, it doesn't seem that impressive on paper. But it was really profound to me. Add one more thing to the list of ways Heavenly Father gave us experiences we needed to be prepared to be in the place where we are.