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Once more, Quijbe here, with a report on a hundred-year-old mistake deeply embedded into the underground language of ASL. (That means American Sign Language for the acronymically challenged).
I'm not going to mess around with digging up facts and doing worthless research. Instead I'm heading straight into the 21st century style of journalism and am just going to tell you what I think and tell you why it's right. Let's get into it, shall we?
What letter is this in sign language?
You don't know? Well you're not expected to; you’re not deaf (or maybe you are and you are just alphabetically challenged) so it's understandable. But before I tell you the answer, let's look at one more letter.
Now guess what letter this is. I'm going to give you a hint. The 2 letters I have just shown you are the letters "R" and the letter "X." Now determine which is which and forget about getting a gold star because you're wrong. The first letter made by crossing your index and middle finger to resemble an “X” is "R" and the second letter made by curling your index finger to resemble a lower case “R” is in fact "X." Surely you see where I'm going with this. (They're backwards for the logically conclusive challenged.)
I hypothesize that the Webster of the dactylology dictionary was examining a diagram similar to the one below, lost his place and flip-flopped the “R” and the “X.” Since this person was the "Webster of the dictionary for the deaf" nobody disagreed with his lexicon. The rest, as we flippantly say in the authoring industry, is history.
For how long have we been teaching our deaf children this obvious and critical mistake?
How long will it take humanity to fix the errors of their past? When will this wrong be set right? I say: Now!
I pledge to no longer use the mistaken gestures of the inaccurate ASL alphabet. I will use for “R” and for "X".
I ask all of you to make the same pledge and follow me into a brave new world, a world where our inauditory children learn right from wrong, curve from cross, “R” from “X.”
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