Sending the right signs

There’s a class to suit everyone. Frances McNulty is learning Irish Sign Language

FRANCES McNULTY is a film production assistant with Mind the Gap films. When she started her job, she was working on Hands On, a diversity programme for the deaf community that was shown on RTÉ1. "I'm taking a beginners' class in Irish Sign Language (ISL) in Trinity College," she says. "I work with hearing and deaf people, so obviously being able to communicate is really important. The classes are a huge help."

Learning ISL isn’t something that should, says McNulty, be limited to those working within a related profession. “I wish I’d started a long time ago. It’s an Irish language, different to British and American Sign Language, so I feel like maybe it would be advantageous to be taught it on a basic level in schools.”

It is a 24-week programme, with 15 people in the class and, although it is taught by a deaf instructor entirely through sign language, McNulty didn’t find it overly difficult to keep up.

“There was an interpreter for a little while at the beginning, to explain the logistics of the course, but all of the teaching is through ISL,” she says. “Everyone in the class was on the same level, which is really reassuring, and it was a lot of fun.”

Learning a language is something that takes time and, above all, practice, so McNulty had an advantage in being able to practise her new skill in her workplace. “It makes a huge difference in work as well,” she notes. “It’s great when I start recognising signs, and the people I work with can start signing to me. At this stage, it’s still very much the basics, but it feels good to be able to make an effort.”

Although learning anything new doesn’t always need a direct application in life (fine art, for example, might be something people enjoy without needing to do on a daily basis), would learning ISL be interesting for someone who doesn’t have daily interaction with the deaf community?

“Actually, I’ve found people are really interested in it,” says McNulty. “Unless you know someone who is deaf, a lot of people wouldn’t know much about either the community or the language, so most people seem to find it really interesting.

“Above all, they’re really enjoyable classes. It’s very laid back, there’s no sense that anyone is judging anyone else’s ability. We’re all on the same level and learning at the same pace and it’s really nice to be able to sign on even a basic level. It’s so different to anything I’ve studied before.”

While some people throughout their school years, for example, would have been “good at languages”, ISL, says McNulty, is a whole different kettle of fish. Being talented at picking up grammar isn’t necessarily going to serve you well when learning ISL.

“ISL has a very different grammatical structure to English, and it takes a while to stop thinking with that structure in mind. It’s not even like learning French, where some words you come across are similar to English and you kind of recognise phrases. It’s just such a different language, and it’s initially difficult to get out of a particular mindset,” she says. “Facial expression, for example, is a huge part of the language, much more so than in English, and you have to get the expressions right in order to make any sense.”

It’s difficult to get by without making frequent blunders in the effort to be understood. “I’ve made quite a few mistakes, where I’ve accidentally used signs that are really inappropriate. At a Christmas party I told a colleague that I felt horny, when I meant to use the sign for shy but it’s mostly just really funny, and everyone understands the difficulties you’re having.”

Having moved from Hands Ononto another project, will McNulty finish the classes and take up something else?"This course finishes in March, but hopefully I'll start another one and move up a level. It's something that I think I'll always be able to use, so it's nice to have it. It's like any language, it's not something you actively want to forget."