‘Is Learning BSL For Me?’
Suri Jiang
Entering the unfamiliar city of London, I felt like I was exploring the unknown and facing new challenges. Everything—the environment, the culture, the language—was new to me, and as I adapted to life in London, I gradually realised that ‘language’ was the key to my connection with the world.
I have been wearing hearing aids since I was six years old, and they have been my ‘friend’ ever since. For someone like me, who has been wearing hearing aids since I was a child and who relies heavily on them, the concept of ‘language’ has always been vague. Occasionally, when my friends and I discuss different descriptions of sound, I think: ‘Language’ is the key to my connection with the world, so how do I perceive the world?
I grew up in Asia, a place where the underprivileged are often overlooked and not even allowed to be seen. In the past, I was often told that my hearing impairment was something that should be hidden and that no one should be aware of it. So, from the age of six, I tried to hide my hearing loss and try to look ‘normal’ in order to fit in with the hearing world.
But as I grew up, I came to realise that hiding it didn’t actually help me fit in.
In the past, I studied in an ordinary school in mainland China due to family reasons. My experience there made me realise this even more. In that kind of educational environment, when I missed something in class and asked the teacher to repeat it, I was often met with dissatisfaction or impatience. Later, I realised that this situation did not exist only in schools, but in the entire environment and society as well. I began to wonder if the world really allows people like me to be understood and accepted.
Until that day, for the first time in my life, I came into close contact with a deaf person.
At the invitation of a friend, I attended a birthday party for the deaf community. Since I don’t know BSL, I introduced myself by typing my name, hometown, and school on my mobile phone. They also typed their names and taught me some basic BSL. ‘Thank you’ in BSL was the first sign I ever learned.
As I watched them sit together, talking, signing, and laughing fluently in BSL, I was struck by the power of silent expression. In their world, sound barely exists. But even in a world without sound, they can still make their voices heard.
I’ve always relied on hearing aids and other technologies to help me hear, and I’m used to interacting with the world through lip reading. These technologies have helped me at times, but BSL has made me think about the possibilities of a different kind of communication.
In recent years, there have been developments in speech technology, such as speech recognition, real-time subtitling systems, and other innovations.
When I came to London, especially since I hadn’t learned any sign language, I relied heavily on technology to aid my daily conversations, using speech-to-text tools to help me interact with my environment and communicate with people. However, the technology was not as reliable as I thought it would be, and I still had communication problems.
When I was sitting far away from the lecturer, my device couldn’t pick up their voice clearly, and the transcribed text was often incomplete; when the environment was too noisy, the technology couldn’t even recognise speech correctly, resulting in broken conversations or even incorrect information. It makes me wonder if these technologies can really help long-neglected groups fully address their challenges.
For many in the Deaf community, sign language is not just a tool for communication, it is a culture. But with the rapid advancement of technology, will sign language become marginalised? Or will technology encourage more people to learn about sign language and even support its use?
I can’t predict how the future will unfold, but this question makes me realise that communication is not an either/or choice—perhaps it is meant to coexist and complement each other.
Because of the way I grew up and learned, I was used to relying on hearing aids and interacting with the world through lip reading. My parents and I never considered learning sign language because we didn’t think it would benefit me in any way.
But BSL has made me re-examine whether my hearing aid has really made me ‘hear.’ Is it just helping me to adapt to the listener’s way of communicating, without leading me to step out of this framework and explore another way of understanding the world? In the past, I used to think that language had to rely on sound, so I always tried my best to seem ‘no different’ from the listener, not wanting to become an ‘alien.’ But BSL has shown me that the world can be ‘heard’ and ‘seen’ through countless forms of communication that are constantly being redefined. It doesn’t need sound, but it can still convey emotions, thoughts, and connections.
I began to realise that true ‘listening’ is not about sound, but about truly understanding the other person.
It wasn’t until I came into contact with a group of deaf people in London that I saw the issue from a whole new perspective. Like me, they wear hearing aids, but rely mainly on BSL and mobile phones for communication. At that moment, I realised that for them, BSL is not just a language, but a cultural identity, a way of connecting with the world. It made me rethink whether linguistic diversity is the key to understanding the world. If the purpose of language is not just to make sounds, should we rethink the definition of language? Perhaps the value of language is not whether it produces sound, but how it helps us understand each other.
I used to think that language was about ‘making sounds’, but BSL made me realise that language also affects how we perceive the world. Different speakers of a language, or even different modes of communication, such as spoken or visual language, can bring about a completely different view of the world.
“I started to think: if BSL is also a language, can it exist alongside other languages? London is a multilingual city with speakers from all over the world. What role does BSL play in this linguistic diversity? I’ve often wondered if there is a form of ‘hybrid communication’ in London, where BSL, spoken language, and lip-reading complement each other. Language itself is flexible and ever-changing, and perhaps BSL can be part of that, rather than just a minority language.
“Language is not only a medium of communication, but also a way of interacting with society and constructing meaning. This made me start to think about whether sign language, as a visual language, can fulfill the same social and cultural functions as spoken language. If the essence of language is to understand each other, are BSL and spoken language really that different? If the world were silent, would we still be able to understand each other?
These problems gave me the idea of learning BSL.
But back to reality, learning BSL is full of challenges for me. It is not as simple as learning a few signs; it requires a complete shift in both language and thinking. BSL is a complete language system, not merely a signed version of spoken English. It has its own grammar, vocabulary, and expressive structures.
As someone who has long relied on hearing aids to perceive sound, I had never truly been exposed to sign language. Learning BSL meant that I had to completely change my communication patterns and learn how to ‘talk with my hands’ and how to understand gestures and subtle changes in facial expressions and movements. This is a very different way of communicating from what I am used to. Not only did it require a long period of training, but it also required me to break away from my existing understanding of language and learn a whole new way of communicating from scratch.
What makes me more hesitant is that learning BSL is not only a linguistic challenge, but also a matter of cultural and identity integration. As a Deaf person, I am not unfamiliar with the ‘silent world,’ but the cultural, historical, and communal aspects of BSL are completely new to me. I couldn’t help but think: if I learnt BSL, would it mean my identity changes? Would I be able to truly integrate into the community? Or would I remain in an ambiguous place, neither in the hearing world nor in the culture of BSL? These questions made me feel uneasy and even doubtful about my ability to overcome the difficulties of the learning process. It also made me think about the relationship between language and identity.
On a social level, I can’t help but think: if more people could learn BSL, would this promote a more inclusive language environment? However, at this stage, sign language is still marginalised in many situations. Even in Western countries where the system is relatively developed and support is provided in various areas such as education, public services, and the media, sign language users still face many communication barriers in their daily lives, in the workplace, and in medical institutions, limiting access to information, employment, and healthcare for the deaf.
If sign language can be more widely accepted, can it break the language barrier and encourage society to pay more attention to the needs of the deaf community? Will it enable these groups, which have been easily neglected in the past, to be truly ‘seen’ and understood? These questions have made me realise that language is not only a personal choice, but also a matter of social tolerance and fairness.
As a British sign language, BSL is not an internationally recognised language. Different countries have different sign language systems, and there can be significant differences in signs and grammar. For someone who has been moving back and forth between London, Hong Kong, and China for a long time and may continue to relocate in the future, what is the value of learning BSL? If I have to leave the UK one day, will BSL still be useful for communication? This makes me think: is learning BSL a long-term journey worth investing in?”
“Despite this, I still have high hopes for BSL and am eager to understand and communicate with the world through a language that does not rely on sound. However, I am still worried that I will not be able to master this new language. I am afraid of failing in my attempts, and I even wonder if I will be able to adapt to this mode of communication. These psychological pressures are perhaps the biggest challenge in my BSL learning process.
Actually, I do not have the answers to these questions now.
Maybe I can try to learn it for a short time to see if this language of gestures and facial expressions is suitable for me. Or maybe I don’t necessarily need to learn BSL, but rather observe and study to make the unseen visible and understood. Or perhaps I see this experience as a starting point and let it become part of my future research, rather than a decision to be made immediately.
I can’t give a definite answer to whether I want to learn BSL or not, and perhaps I don’t need to rush to find one. The discovery of BSL by chance has opened my eyes to another possibility of communicating with the world. It is not just a combination of gestures, but a visual and emotional language. At the same time, it reminds me that the world can be ‘heard’ and ‘seen’ in different ways, and that true understanding does not necessarily depend on sound, but on our willingness to understand. Whether BSL is right for me is still a question worth exploring.
The question itself has opened a new door for me to start rethinking—can we still connect with the world when sound disappears? This is not just a personal exploration, but also a broader linguistic and cultural discussion. When sound is no longer the primary means of communication, is there a more inclusive language design? This may be a direction worth thinking about.
Perhaps one day,
I will accidentally begin learning sign language,
just as I once accidentally arrived in London.