Yes. People would find out you're bullshitting them and then you'll end up in even more high anxiety situations. Even worse people will get frustrated at you even more or misinterpret your act for rudeness or a multitude of different things.

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/Men-Stabbed-After-Sign-Language-Mistaken-For-Gang-Signs-121052729.html

Look at this for example.

I wish I could get away with this.. I rather dislike talking to people and avoid doing so as much as I can, but just as pointed out by >>7027 people think you're a dick/jurk when you don't talk to them, and they'll treat you as such.

That's why I love the internet, all text chat all the time. Unfortunately voice is becoming so common in games that I don't know how much longer that will last

I don't get how that would make things better. You're still communicating with people and in fact you're just making it harder for yourself and the other people, which will make it even more stressful.

I'm assuming OP read The Catcher in the Rye, or watched GiTS at some point? Catcher has some ideas in it that I remember being quite /tc/-relevant (hothouse flowers, specifically). Holden's basically a madman/NEET without the otaku elements as it is. One of those books you read when you're younger, but hold onto it later in time. It really is. Or you end up hating it, but I'm really digressing here.

I've always loved the idea of not having to talk to people in daily life. I'd say go for it, man. Live the dream. Personally, I can't think of any drawbacks other than the obvious ones. Just don't get caught, and I'd say everything would be fine.

I've always had a very expressive body language and used facial expressions a lot. It lets me get away with using very little speech in daily activities while still being considered a normal social person. Small talk is impossible for me though, I get anxious quickly if I'm forced to be in a situation where I need to talk spontaneously.

Public speaking is easy for me too surprisingly, I need to it a lot at university so it's useful. I just have to concentrate on the progression of the speech and even improvising stuff is easy as the subject is something I'm familiar with already. I never understood how people can find it harder than normal conversation (both irl and online), you have to constantly read the other person's thoughts and worry about what to say next and you're the target of the other person's attention on a much more personal level, resulting in much more direct feedback and larger chance of judgment over mistakes. Even writing forum posts is harder for me, saying stupid stuff will stay there until the post is deleted or you edit it out, with public speeches they disappear instantly and nobody will remember them after five minutes.

Yeah, I dunno how common it is to feel anxious over online chatting but being able to give public speeches confidently.

A real deaf/mute person will be able to tell in a second you're not actually mute. Sign Language is incredibly easy to learn, but unless you're actually deaf, you will never be fluent.

>>7041
Mmm yeah. I tend to communicate using non-verbal grunts instead of actual words.

You lost your voice recently and need to go to a doctor. Say this.

If you're seeing the people you bullshit again, tell them that you've been diagnosed with a rare disease, and to get your voice back, you need surgery, but you have to not eat for x days and have an IV drip during that time. You'd rather not go through with it and you have grown accustomed to not speaking. You're too old to learn sign language effectively, and since this happened so recently you are confused when meeting other mutes. A white board will suffice, so stop nosing in on my business.

>>7048
>You're too old to learn sign language effectively
No one will buy this, especially not people who know it. Sign language is one of the easiest languages ever.

It's too hard to fake being a mute OP. It's just easier being an introvert, and not worrying about it.

>>7050
Does Gordon Freeman use sign language?

>>7061
Gordon Freeman can say anything with only a look.

>>7050
I don't know about that, a lot of people seem to have no problem believing bullshit like "you can't learn a foreign language if you're more than twelve years old."

>>7064
It is harder to learn another language the older you get, but that's not the point.

Sign language can basically be thought of as an extension of English. I suck at foreign language, and did everything I could to get out of Spanish and Latin in high school, but I took sign language for two years and had no trouble at all. A deaf person recently came by my table at a restaurant, and even though I hadn't signed in over a year, I still managed to have a short conversation with him. Actions are much easier to understand and remember than speech.

I wanted to learn sign language for similar purposes as just opening my mind to say a word made me feel pretty angry back in the day. Then I found out that sign language isn't universal (which makes sense I guess) and I kinda lost interest.

I think this is /so/ related, though.

I considered trying this a while back, after reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I mumble and stutter a lot when I'm nervous, and am always being misheard and asked to repeat myself or given strange looks because of it, which I find really embarrassing and only makes my speech get worse. Using catching the bus (in the literal sense) as an example, I almost never get heard on my first attempt at telling them where I want to go to, so being able to just hand over a piece of paper seems like it'd be much easier, I've just never been brave enough to take the risk and find out how it goes.

Let me know if you do go along with it, OP.

>>7045
>but unless you're actually deaf, you will never be fluent.

You do know there are translators for deaf mutes, right? I went to elementary school with a deaf boy and he had a woman whom followed him around to translate what he wanted to say for those who could not speak in signs. She wasnt mute and was fluent.

Also, signs are extremely easy to learn but change from language to language. It would only be useful for your language speakers and deaf mutes will be able to tell you off easily.

>>7098
I should have said, "unless you're deaf or dedicate your life to deaf people". I thought it was self-explanatory.
>Also, signs are extremely easy to learn but change from language to language.
That's why I said it can be thought of as an extension of English. For example, the sign for "red" is rubbing an "R" sign on your lips, like lipstick. Japan obviously doesn't have the letter R, so their sign is probably completely different.

>>7100
Japanese sign language is recent and does not have a uniformization for the country. They simply made it universal to write kanjis in air to speak to each other as there are no right ways to create a sign language like others.

>>7102
I know, what's your point?

>>7066
>It is harder to learn another language the older you get, but that's not the point.
Worst fallacy ever. Adult learners are actually much much much faster than their child counterparts.

>>7107
Why is that? When learning a second language, people subconsciously compare rules from their native language to the new one, rather than starting from a blank slate like a child. I don't believe it's a matter of children being able to learn everything faster, just a matter of children learning a second language faster. I guess the kid might occasionally get the rules mixed up if he learns both languages at once, but that shouldn't make an enormous difference.

>>7110 >>7066
I'm not >>7107, but you shouldn't compare actual language-learning to what you experienced in high school. I took Spanish classes in school for five or six years, but I wasn't even able to understand much of the language by the end of it, much less speak it myself. Yet it took me only about 2-3 years each to get a good grip of English and Japanese through self-study, despite being past my supposed linguistic prime.

>>7107
I have no idea if languages in general are easier to learn for children or adults if they use the same study methods, but Kanji definitely are easier for adults.

>>7110
Children being better at language learning is a complete illusion.

In a controlled experiment, children were pitted against adolescents and adults in a controlled environment. The results were the children had 0 advantage, and even some disadvantages.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED142068&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED142068

The advantages a child has are completely situational when learning a new language:

Environment: Children don't learn a new language in general unless they're living in 100% immersion, that is, a place that speaks the language natively. Adults tend to learn from books and as a hobby. Guess which method is way faster? On top of this Children are usually enrolled in a school in their new foreign language compared to adults which aren't.

Help: Children tend to be surrounded by completely fluent authorities on the language for large amounts of time when learning a new language, teachers, parents, relatives, even bright friends. Adults tend to be stuck vying for the attention of a teacher in a once a week language class. Guess who has the advantage here?

Motivation: Children tend to have to LIVE in their new language environment and they have to use it every day. They have to write reports in it, they have to watch media so that they can talk to their new friends in it. Adults tend to go back to their native language as much as possible and are much better at insulating themselves from their second language even if they live some place which speaks it.

Expectations: Kids generally are not expected to speak well to begin with. You gives them a lot more slack than you are aware of. This means kids a lot more free to make mistakes and try new things. Adults tend towards not wanting to say anything that will embarrass themselves.

Goals: This is the single most important point, Children tend to have a goal of second language mastery. Adults tend to stop bothering at "enough to get by" and then hide in their first language's culture. This is how you end up with old people living in a new country who can't speak a lick of the new language. They don't want to. It's not that they can't. They don't want to.

Anyways, all of these "disadvantages" can and should be easily overcome by a motivated adult learner. The motivated adult learner in fact has many advantages when the controllable variables such as the above are leveled, Such as the ability to control their situation, comprehension and analysis of grammar and "structures".

In general I would say as a hobby pursuit, the adult or adolescent is in a much better position than a child.

Post edited on 18th May 2011, 11:01am

>>7112
I actually wanted to learn those; I liked Spanish at first, and I took Latin as an extracurricular activity. It was when it got into gender, declensions, etc. that I completely lost it.
>>7113
That makes more sense, thanks.

>>7118
You're misunderstanding something here.
Your problem wasn't your motivation, your ability to learn languages or the supposed inherent difficulty of the languages you tried to learn. Your problem was that you were doing what they told you to do in school. What they make us do in most language classes has little to do with actual language-acquisition.
You don't even need to know about "gender, declensions, etc." if all you want is to speak and understand Latin or Spanish.
I know jack shit about English grammar, yet I'm writing this. You probably knew even less about English grammar before you learned about it in school, yet chances are you were even better at the language itself than I am.
Immersing yourself in the language invariably beats trying to memorize vocab lists and formal grammar "rules" by a long shot. I've never seen real evidence to the contrary, while the research >>7113-kun cites seems to confirm it.

>>7142
Latin wasn't part of school, I just wanted to learn Latin. I don't see how someone can understand Latin without knowing grammar, because words change drastically depending on how they're used. Even if I knew the base word, if I didn't know the declension, I often wouldn't recognize it.

>>7159

Ever looked at the relationship between a present-tense English verb and its past tense form? Or spelling vs. pronunciation? English is easily the most ass-backwards, nonsensical, illogical language on the planet, but billions of people speak it well without knowing the first thing about its grammar. I guarantee you the average Roman didn't know the ablative case from a hole in the ground, just like the average English speaker couldn't tell you about split infinitives or explain why "She goed to the store and buyed cheese for her mouses" is wrong.

You could stare at conjugated verbs like "bought," "went," "am," and "saw" all day long and never guess what their unconjugated forms are, because they don't follow any kind of pattern; but you, as an English speaker, are able to use these words and thousands of others like them correctly, and presumably without even consciously thinking about it. Same goes for Latin, and any other human language.

>>7159
>Latin wasn't part of school, I just wanted to learn Latin.
whether or not it was compulsory wasn't what I was getting at. You did either take classes or follow a textbook, right? There you go.

>I don't see how someone can understand Latin without knowing grammar
In the West, linguistics and the notion of grammar emerged around 2000 years ago. Do you think people didn't understand languages before that?

In a sense it's right that you need to be able to use grammar. The mistake most people make is just that they learn things about the language instead of the language itself. Your brain will subconsciously figure out all the grammar rules for you, if only you give it enough input of the language to try and decode. Grammar can be learned from language, but the other way around just doesn't work well.

Saying that you need to consciously know what an accusative case is just to speak Latin or German is kind of like saying that you need to be a master of biochemistry just so you can move your arm.

>>7179
So how are you supposed to immerse yourself in a language that no one speaks?

>>7238
I wasn't sure what you were talking about at first (a planned language? A language not spoken in your area, like Japanese?), but I assume you mean Latin.
Well, for getting into it, the all-Latin textbook at http://www.lingua-latina.dk/index2.htm seems like a good choice.
I remember the website of the Vatican had a selection of Latin media, among others some church music and the Latin version of the Bible, which I'd probably end up reading multiple times if I were learning Latin (I'm not a Christian though). There is bound to be an audiobook version of the Latin Bible somewhere, too.
When you need to look something up, there's a Latin version of Wikipedia with some 50 000 articles.
If you use Linux, you can set the language of your operating system to Latin. Unfortunately, only 1%-2% of the applications seem to be actually translated into Latin, although this does apparently include some video games like the turn-based strategy game Wesnoth. I guess not many Catholic priests use Linux.
According to Wikipedia, there are even some radio and TV programs regularly broadcast in Latin, might be possible to get records of them somehow.
There should also be plenty of decent Latin dictionaries, both historical and modern.
For some more listening, I know there's tons of music with lyrics in Latin, and a lot of Latin textbooks also come with an audio CD.
I'd wager there are quite a few internet forums where enthusiasts speak Latin, with luck there might even be a *chan somewhere (I know Esperanto has one or two).
But of course, the most interesting material in Latin is the huge amount of poetry, historical documents and religious and scientific discourse that has accumulated over the course of the millennia, much of it preserved in good condition. It covers everything from great ancient minds like Cicero to younger personalities such as Newton and even a few modern scientists.

Granted, learning Latin is probably not as fun for most people as learning a modern major language like English or Japanese that you can pick up entirely through porn and video games. But there's still enough Latin around to get anyone truly interested fluent, and it still beats taking Latin classes in terms of effectiveness.

>>7258
Uh... thanks for the in-depth response, but I don't care about Latin anymore.

>>7335
almost doesn't matter. The basic idea is that a language is probably learnable even when many people would think it isn't. Applies to most foreign langs, not just Latin.
I've come across a lot of people who claimed they "can't" learn Japanese or whatever just because their local community college doesn't offer courses...

The purpose of getting all those audio media is to listen to it essentially 24/7, in case you were wondering.

www.alljapaneseallthetime.com

^Pretty good blog on the subject. Unfortunately, he's rearranged all the pages recently and (IMO) made the archives much harder to navigate, but the learning method he advocates is solid. And of course, despite the title, it's applicable to any language.

Live the dream, OP