For all of our native tongues, we're all natives here

As you may or may not know, my ultimate plan is to retire to the country and live off the phat of the land. But as a lover of language and languages, while I'm at this stage in my life where city-dwelling is convenient, I have to say that Montreal is the place to be. Earlier this week, I was at a panel discussion on cochlear implants. On the panel were two Deaf individuals who spoke American Sign Language. As a result, there was an ASL/English interpreter. This sounds (relatively) straightforward. But of course in reality it was more interesting than that. Neither of the Deaf panelists had learned ASL as a first signed language; one was from Quebec and had learned LSQ (langue de signes québecoise), the other was from Israel and was a native speaker of Israeli Sign Language. Furthermore, the ASL interpreter was a French speaker who wasn't great in English. So, the situation was as follows: Two L2 ASL signers (with different L1s) signed in ASL through a hearing interpreter, who did her best to translate into English (her L3). When she didn't know the correct way to say something in English, she said it in French, at which point the audience (which consisted of mainly English-French bilinguals) would call out the correct translation, and the interpreter would say "thank you" (or sometimes "merci").

I love it!