Stine: Knowing sign language is an ‘amazing skill set to possess’

Lauren Ridloff is a deaf woman and an actor in the new Marvel movie, “Eternals.” There is a study that came out recently where people who saw the movie were given a poll and asked if they were interested in learning sign language based off Ridloff’s character. A significant number of the people polled said yes.

KIRO Radio’s Tom Tangney says ‘Eternals’ has to do a lot of heavy lifting for a single film

KIRO Nights host Jack Stine’s mom is deaf, and he is fluent in sign language. Stine says sign language is actually a very accessible language because it’s an expressive language.

“You don’t have to worry about the phonetics of it, you just have to worry about the expression of it and what motions you’re doing with your hands,” he said.

He believes there are a lot of people who would benefit from learning sign language.

“You know the ins and outs of how to communicate with a deaf person, or even someone who is a child of a deaf adult, like how I am, because it’s basically like having a superpower,” Stine said.

“If you’ve ever been interested in learning a language or you have to take a language credit for college, I always recommend sign language,” he added. “It’s an amazing skill set to possess. And it’s just a fun language to learn, and it’s a fun language to have in your back pocket.”

Shane on KIRO Nights agreed.

“I took one year of sign language in college. I did my best to try to not take a foreign language, and since I have dyslexia really bad, I was really stressing out about taking a foreign language,” he said.

Stine seconded that, and says he definitely recommends sign language to people who are dyslexic or say they can’t learn Spanish or any other language for whatever reason.

“100%,” Shane said. “If you struggle with reading or writing, do ASL. It’s pretty awesome.”

Listen to KIRO Nights weeknights from 7 – 10 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.