- Joined
- Apr 23, 2019
I watched some of her TikToks, and her signing looks a lot more like a hearing second-language ASL user than a Deaf person. Her signing is very English in her grammar and sign choices, and she makes many mistakes in sign vocabulary indicative of a person who is learning the language but is far from fluent. Her mouth movements and facial expressions (or lack thereof, for the latter) are a tell, too, she’s hearing. She’s memorized some ASL phrases that make her appear more natural, but it’s all things anyone could pick up in an ASL 101 class. She also likes to speed up her videos to make her look like a much more fluent and proficient signer than she actually is. It’s common for second-language users to sign fast but make mistakes when they are either nervous or over-confident and trying to appear like they know more than they do.
As an example, I took an in-depth look at her Deaf-blind TikTok (archive).
First off, she’s obviously not DeafBlind. She reads the description she‘s signing word-for-word from a source off camera, which her eyes are clearly following. She also keeps calling it Deaf-blind, when a two-second google search can tell you the preferred terminology is DeafBlind.
Moving on to the content of the video and her signing. It sucks. She signs better than Wedge, but that’s a very low bar.
I’d believe she’s taken some ASL classes, since she does have a few commonly-taught phrases grammatically correct, but those are sprinkled into a jumble of signs mostly in English word order. She knows some basics and uses them correctly, but likely looks up the signs she wants to use and just sticks them in without regard to correct grammar and sentence structure. That’s another common mistake hearing ASL learners make, they look up a sign using the English word but use the wrong sign for the context (see below for a few examples; in general, many English words have numerous sign equivalents depending on meaning. The word “run,” for example, do I mean run as in the exercise, run for office, the river runs, the faucet is running, there was a run on the sale, there’s a run in my tights, or you’re going to take what I say and run with it? There’s a different sign for each of those). She also “mispronounces“ signs, where some aspect of the sign is incorrect or it‘s just sloppy enough that the meaning is lost. It’s another common mistake learners make, not Deaf adult signers. Her mistakes make it hard to follow without her captions.
I’d also like to mention that it’s rare for profoundly Deaf people (like she claims to be) to read and write at the fluency she does. The average Deaf adult in the US reads at the 4th grade level, and more recent informal studies hint that it may be even lower now. DeafBlind people have even lower literacy levels on average. And if you’re profoundly Deaf, you‘re not putting music you can’t hear and don’t know what it says in the background. There’s no point.
Here’s some of the grammatical and sign errors I noticed, with the end total being: not Deaf, just another munchie trying to be something she’s not and failing in a hilarious way. Mostly in order:
—If she’s going to fingerspell her name fast, she should do it correctly. Looks like name starts with K instead of W. Hi there, Konder.d\
—fingerspells FORMAL, there’s a very common sign for FORMAL she should’ve used
—TOPIC/TITLE instead of DEFINITION (ironically she uses DEFINITION correctly just before this, when she asks when the definition of DeafBlindness is. Hence why I think she’s had a class or two, ’what does that mean?’ is a pretty standard question ASL students learn early on)
—CONFUSION when she means MIXED
—LOST-A THING instead of HEARING-LOSS (latter has its own discrete sign, former is mainly for something tangible)
—sloppy FLAG instead of SPECTRUM
—LET’S-SEE instead of VISUAL
—she’s signing all of this definition word-for-word in English. That alone is wrong, because it doesn’t make sense. She doesn’t use any spacial indicators or grammar, and no modulation of nouns or verbs (I may not be using the right linguistics terms, but y’all get the idea hopefully).
—SOMETIMES instead of RARE (she could potentially modify SOMETIMES to mean SELDOM or INFREQUENT, but she doesn’t do the right movement, facial expression, or mouth movements for that)
—PEOPLE is sideways like PLACE and
—PERSONALITY/PERSONALIZATION when she means ‘ personally’. I have never seen a fluent signer use that, it’s an English phrase that has little to no meaning in ASL. There are multiple ways she could convey this idea in ASL and be conceptually accurate, but she does none of the those. She goes on to make this same mistake at least 2 more times, it’s just as wrong and awkward every time.
—VISION + LOSS-A THING wrong, just sign BLIND you didn’t misplace your eyeballs dummy
—PROFOUNDLY DEAF, wrong placement, and I‘ve never seen Deaf people younger than 70 sign this.
—CORRECT/CRITICIZE instead of CORRECT/FIX, assuming she looked up this sign but doesn’t know enough to pick the right one based on meaning instead of just corresponding English word. Rookie move.
—HEARING AIDS, one hand is close, the other is doing some crazy disembodied PHOENIX in the wrong place.
—BRAILLE, right idea wrong execution. She does what looks like a cross between MEDICINE and TABLET instead
—fingerspells ‘mild-moderate’, also not technically wrong but those concepts can be signed in a clearer way than fingerspelling. Odd choice for someone who identifies so strongly as Deaf.
—LEARN, sign correct but way over mouthed. Very much a hearing person thing.
—PEOPLE sideways again, looks like PLACE
—USE also sideways, getting close to SHEEP territory
—FLAG + BIG instead of SPECTRUM + show a wide spectrum. This time is even worse. You’re not singing the National Anthem, lady, get that flag under control.
Moving on to the content of the video and her signing. It sucks. She signs better than Wedge, but that’s a very low bar.
I’d believe she’s taken some ASL classes, since she does have a few commonly-taught phrases grammatically correct, but those are sprinkled into a jumble of signs mostly in English word order. She knows some basics and uses them correctly, but likely looks up the signs she wants to use and just sticks them in without regard to correct grammar and sentence structure. That’s another common mistake hearing ASL learners make, they look up a sign using the English word but use the wrong sign for the context (see below for a few examples; in general, many English words have numerous sign equivalents depending on meaning. The word “run,” for example, do I mean run as in the exercise, run for office, the river runs, the faucet is running, there was a run on the sale, there’s a run in my tights, or you’re going to take what I say and run with it? There’s a different sign for each of those). She also “mispronounces“ signs, where some aspect of the sign is incorrect or it‘s just sloppy enough that the meaning is lost. It’s another common mistake learners make, not Deaf adult signers. Her mistakes make it hard to follow without her captions.
I’d also like to mention that it’s rare for profoundly Deaf people (like she claims to be) to read and write at the fluency she does. The average Deaf adult in the US reads at the 4th grade level, and more recent informal studies hint that it may be even lower now. DeafBlind people have even lower literacy levels on average. And if you’re profoundly Deaf, you‘re not putting music you can’t hear and don’t know what it says in the background. There’s no point.
Here’s some of the grammatical and sign errors I noticed, with the end total being: not Deaf, just another munchie trying to be something she’s not and failing in a hilarious way. Mostly in order:
—If she’s going to fingerspell her name fast, she should do it correctly. Looks like name starts with K instead of W. Hi there, Konder.d\
—fingerspells FORMAL, there’s a very common sign for FORMAL she should’ve used
—TOPIC/TITLE instead of DEFINITION (ironically she uses DEFINITION correctly just before this, when she asks when the definition of DeafBlindness is. Hence why I think she’s had a class or two, ’what does that mean?’ is a pretty standard question ASL students learn early on)
—CONFUSION when she means MIXED
—LOST-A THING instead of HEARING-LOSS (latter has its own discrete sign, former is mainly for something tangible)
—sloppy FLAG instead of SPECTRUM
—LET’S-SEE instead of VISUAL
—she’s signing all of this definition word-for-word in English. That alone is wrong, because it doesn’t make sense. She doesn’t use any spacial indicators or grammar, and no modulation of nouns or verbs (I may not be using the right linguistics terms, but y’all get the idea hopefully).
—SOMETIMES instead of RARE (she could potentially modify SOMETIMES to mean SELDOM or INFREQUENT, but she doesn’t do the right movement, facial expression, or mouth movements for that)
—PEOPLE is sideways like PLACE and
—PERSONALITY/PERSONALIZATION when she means ‘ personally’. I have never seen a fluent signer use that, it’s an English phrase that has little to no meaning in ASL. There are multiple ways she could convey this idea in ASL and be conceptually accurate, but she does none of the those. She goes on to make this same mistake at least 2 more times, it’s just as wrong and awkward every time.
—VISION + LOSS-A THING wrong, just sign BLIND you didn’t misplace your eyeballs dummy
—PROFOUNDLY DEAF, wrong placement, and I‘ve never seen Deaf people younger than 70 sign this.
—CORRECT/CRITICIZE instead of CORRECT/FIX, assuming she looked up this sign but doesn’t know enough to pick the right one based on meaning instead of just corresponding English word. Rookie move.
—HEARING AIDS, one hand is close, the other is doing some crazy disembodied PHOENIX in the wrong place.
—BRAILLE, right idea wrong execution. She does what looks like a cross between MEDICINE and TABLET instead
—fingerspells ‘mild-moderate’, also not technically wrong but those concepts can be signed in a clearer way than fingerspelling. Odd choice for someone who identifies so strongly as Deaf.
—LEARN, sign correct but way over mouthed. Very much a hearing person thing.
—PEOPLE sideways again, looks like PLACE
—USE also sideways, getting close to SHEEP territory
—FLAG + BIG instead of SPECTRUM + show a wide spectrum. This time is even worse. You’re not singing the National Anthem, lady, get that flag under control.
