Deaf Students and Foreign Languages: From the Classroom to Duolingo

Ik spreek een beetje Nederlands.
Je parle un peu le Francias.
Ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch.

Thanks to the Duolingo app (available on both Android and iPhone as well as a desktop website), I have been learning multiple languages. While my peers rot their brains with Candy Crush to kill time, I turn to this language-learning app. The app is free, which is wonderful. It is also Deaf-friendly, with an option to turn off the listening and spoken segments in order to focus on the reading and writing segments.


I have been bilingual since I was an infant. English and American Sign Language are both my native languages. And now I'm about to become multilingual.

Back in high school, the school district required all students take at least two years of foreign language. Colleges and universities also have this requirement.

But -

Deaf students would be waived of this requirement. Several of my peers and classmates took advantage of this waiver.

Why? Some educators and staff including my guidance counselor thought that Deaf students might not be capable of learning languages other than English.

Don't they realize that many Deaf / Hard of Hearing students are already bilingual, like me? Technically, we have learned and mastered a second language.

I did not ask for the waiver. Instead, I signed up to take Latin during my sophomore year. (I waited a year so the Deaf student a grade behind could take it with me - thus doubling up the resources, meaning we would have two sign language interpreter working the class with us).

Why Latin? After all - it's a dead language, or so they experts state.

Instead of taking French, Spanish, German, or Japanese - of which all were offered at our high school - we elected to choose the language that required minimal speaking and listening. Thus Latin played to our benefit since 95% of the coursework was focused on reading and writing. Bingo!

Many people advised us against taking the Latin class. They thought we would struggle - or worse, fail the course. But we persisted - and with flying colors. We both made A's in the class, and took the National Latin Examination at the end of the year. Silver medalists, both of us. Our magistra - teacher - informed the class that we two were the highest test scorers in the class.

How's that, for a couple of Deaf students who were "destined to fail" the course?

I ended up taking two years of the language, enough to satisfy collegiate requirements for enrollment. My classmate took it for three years. What I cherish the most about learning Latin, was that I now had a better understanding (and appreciation) of Dr. Seuss with my copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas - or rather, Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit. Also, the best classes were the ones where we would practice reading from Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis. ("But haven't you memorized the English version by now???")

Aside from reading those books in Latin, there have been numerous occasions where my knowledge of Latin has come in handy. Take a history test I once took on the Civil war - I had a brain fart and forgot the definition for antebellum. While I mused over the question, I noticed that the word had roots in Latin. Taking the word and breaking it down, I came up with ante = before; bellum = war. There! I had my answer - "before the war" - i.e. before the Civil War.

Speed up a few years, and my Latin has become rusty from disuse (after all, it's a dead language and not many people know it, let alone converse in it). Then, my mother discovered the Duolingo app and introduced me to this productive activity. Taking her suggestion, I started with French as the language is one of the Romance languages which takes its roots from Latin. Also, my youngest sister is currently in her second year of French in high school.

Progressing through French quickly, I soon arrived at the point where I could read and understand my sister's French writing exercises after only a few weeks' worth of on/off practice. I soon reached level 6 of French, and decided to add another language to my Duolingo account. German soon followed, and I found myself excelling in German quicker than French.

Yet what killed me with both languages - and Latin - was the gender rules. Was that noun masculine or feminine? Most of my errors were not due to not knowing the vocabulary - which I did - but incorrectly identifying the gender inflections. Yet, I made it to level 7 of German before deciding I wanted to check out the Italian and Spanish tracks.

Those lessons stalled after the second level as I found myself mixing up Italian and Spanish. Leaving those two on the back burner for now, I added Dutch to my lessons.

What took me weeks to master in French and German, I flew through the Dutch lessons in hours. One of the benefits of learning Dutch is its roots in both German and English, as well as the absence of gender-nouns prevalent in the other languages. Boek reminded me of book and melk looked vaguely like milk. Lunch and water are spelled the same in both languages.

Taking the words of my guidance counselor in stride, I am glad I did not listen to her or any of the naysayers who decreed that Deaf students would - and should - be waived of the language requirement. Learning foreign languages has - and is - a rich and rewarding experience.

Hearing students may take learning languages for granted, but we Deaf students take learning languages as a gift, for it opens up additional channels of communication. We the Deaf are deprived of opportunities to communicate on a daily basis due to our hearing loss. Using Deaf gain, we can seize those opportunities to learn foreign languages and use them to our benefit.

So - I challenge high school students and college students everywhere to disregard the waiver (Deaf can't? Deaf can!) and take the dive into another language and another culture. Even those who are not in school should not deprive themselves of learning opportunities, and this is where I turn to Duolingo. According to Duolingo, more students are learning another language through their app than those learning the language in a classroom.

Now, excuse me while I take up my daily lessons in Dutch and catch up on my French and German. I do hope Duolingo comes up with a Latin track so I may un-rustyify my knowledge.