• Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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    8 months ago

    Yes! And they work a lot like the puns in spoken languages - you got two things that are conveyed in a similar way, but have a different meaning, so you sub one into another creating an unexpected result.

    For example, in Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) I’ve seen once a person starting with a “I don’t give a fuck” [signs: today I don’t-care], and then immediately “distorting” the don’t-care into a “poor thing”/“I feel sorry” - because even if the gesture is different, the hand configuration is the exact same, using the ring finger at 90° from the palm. (The other person was clearly amused.)

    That’s a pun, in the exact same way as starting with a spoken word, pausing, and then completing it in a way that conveys something else.

  • 93maddie94@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    I read a book last year (Song for a Whale) about a Deaf girl who would play a game with her grandfather where they would create a story together while using the same hand shape all throughout. So maybe they would make a fist, or ann open palm, or a “y” shape and then the story was created using signs that used that hand shape. If you couldn’t continue the story with the same hand shape you lost. Not exactly a pun but I thought it was interesting.

  • rustydomino@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Related question: are there sign language specific dad jokes? That is, corny jokes that work in sign language but not in spoken language?

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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    8 months ago

    I don’t know about puns but I once saw a documentary about a deaf and mute married couple who had a baby. The interesting thing was that the baby started “babbling” with its hands. Can’t remember if it was deaf and/or mute as well.

    • corvi@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I know historically “deaf and dumb” meant deaf and mute, but, at least in the classes I took in college, I was told we don’t use that terminology anymore, for hopefully obvious reasons.

        • bleistift2@feddit.de
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          8 months ago

          This isn’t replacing a euphemism with another one. Dumb has a completely different meaning that’s not even close to ‘cannot speak’, while ‘mute’ conveys exactly that.

      • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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        8 months ago

        Thanks!

        I had asked DDG for a translation and it only told me about “dumb”. In the back of my head I thought that there was a better word but it wouldn’t come to me.

    • howrar@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      My non-deaf and non-mute baby also does hand babbling and will sometimes try to mimic us when we sign. Normal baby behaviour.

  • CaptainEffort@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Depends on what you mean by puns. As someone else pointed out, some signs in and of themselves are jokes, but there are also plenty of jokes in ASL in particular that don’t translate super well, so they’re really only funny in the language.

  • xia@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 months ago

    My understanding is that sign languages are far less ambiguous than natural languages, so i suspect there would be far fewer.