B

When I arrived at the Sign Language Center in Manhattan for my first American Sign Language (ASL) class, a man took one look at my hesitant posture and held up some fingers. One? Two? I put up one finger, and he directed me to the Level 1 class. It was disorienting: Class time was strictly "voices off" to encourage immersive learning and to show respect to the deaf teachers. Without the power of speech, all my classmates and I could do was smile and nod at one another as we took in the new vocabulary.

Learning ASL in the early weeks was a culture shock and a bruise to my ego. As a writer, I pride myself on a certain facility with language. I was taught that there's a perfect combination of words that can most precisely communicate any thought. With ASL, I expected to feel similarly, and thought fluency would come once I collected a critical mass of signs. The first thing you learn in ASL class is the alphabet. As my classmates and I asked and answered questions using words we didn't have the signs for, those early weeks were filled with laborious spelling. It was embarrassing: Seeing a dozen politely smiling faces watching me as I slowly spelled, misspelled and restarted spelling words- often multiple times- was its own kind of torture.

Over time, I picked up on new conventions, like waving a hand or stomping on the ground to get someone's attention. My fingers stalled as they reached for new shapes, and I struggled to differentiate very similar looking signs. Eventually I realized that when you're communicating in sign language, diction (措词) is not as important as the way you embody what you're communicating. I once asked a teacher how to sign the word "desperate". "ASL doesn't have a direct translation of every English word," he told me. "If you want to sign 'desperate', you might just sign the word 'want', but with the appropriate facial and body posturing to show your desperation. It doesn't make sense to sign 'frustrated' if your face doesn't look at all frustrated," he added - it's like speaking in a deadpan monotone while claiming you're angry.

I've been attending ASL classes for almost two years. Initially, my reason was trivial: a childhood fascination with "secret languages". While ASL may not wholly share a vocabulary with English, that doesn't mean it lacks precision. Its precision, I've learned, lies in the common language of the body.