Sign language

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Does anyone here know or is learning sign language? What issues have you encountered.

I'm learning British Sign Language. I am doing well learning the signs because, it's a language and I'm good at that sort of thing. What I'm struggling with is remembering to do the facial expression, and doing them naturally when I do remember. I have a pretty blank face when I speak, so I have a blank face when I sign.

Also, somewhat related is that I can't lip read for toffee. I mean, I'm really shockingly awful at it. There are some signs in BSL that are the same but are only differentiated by lip pattern like 'niece and nephew'. I can't tell the difference. I think it might be because I've got used to not looking at people's faces a lot when communicating.

That is a difficulty you will have to overcome, unfortunately. My brother is fluent in ASL (not deaf, just thought it seemed like an easy series of classes), and we were discussing linguistics one day when I asked him "Do you think the integration of facial expressions into ASL as a part of the language puts people with asperger's syndrome at a disadvantage when using it?" He said "Yes it does, but the language was developed to facilitate communication between deaf people. People with AS who attempt to learn it are statistical outliers, and modifying the language to better suit them would strip it of a level of it's expressivity, as well as be a waste of time since the odds of both having AS and being deaf are pretty low, uncommon enough that it's better they adapt to the language than the language adapt to them."

So I guess you should keep practicing.

I know enough ASL to communicate effectively. Thinking about taking a couple of classes...