the word long existed before the character. The Chinese spoke in Chinese, not in english. So they didn’t look for a character for “deaf” they look for a character for “long” which existed and has variated from a long long long time ago. Chinese was not created in one day by the way.

Thanks for sharing this video and your opinions to which I very much agree. I have been studying Croatian sign language for 3 years and what fascinates me most is the expression that is filled with energy which you can rarely find with hearing people. When you are for the first time in the presence of deaf people communicating it takes a few moments for the brain to connect why there is so much vividness and no sound… It came to me as a surprise and a fascination as well that finally brought me to study the sign language and the deaf community culture.

About the term “deaf-mute”, I completely agree that it needs to be changed. Two years ago I went to Italy and saw a group of deaf people protesting on the main square in Trieste about this very issue. So it seems that Italy is something like China in that matter… Deaf communities in Croatia are also fighting to change this expression in the local language. And what I noticed is that they are doing a great job. Slowly the Croatian language is getting accustomed to use the new term, although now and then I hear someone say “deaf-mute” when talking about deaf people. This issue may seem like a small and not so important thing, but what it actually does, it changes the collective awareness of how deaf communities are seen, presented and talked about between hearing population.

We should take care of each other and this is one of the ways to put it in practice. Thanks again.

Thanks for this post; it was a pleasure to read your thoughts on the language.

Interesting points about the character 龙, and character etymology is certainly a bottomless pit of intellectual goodness for those that want it. Still, I tend to be wary of reading too much into certain characters and meanings. There is most often no way to distinguish real etymologies from traditional rationalizations, and sometimes the exceptions outnumber the “rule.”

Regarding Alice’s comment about Deaf culture, I was thinking about it, and it’s really quite an interesting question. To use a really simple example, just take the five senses and look at what happens when you deprive someone of one of them.

• no sight = blind
• no hearing = deaf
• no sense of taste = ??
• no sense of smell = ??
• no sense of touch = ??

Now, for the last three, I’m sure there are names for these conditions, but we don’t think of them as we do being deaf or blind. Furthermore, a blind person can communicate in the spoken language just like anyone else. Deaf people really are a special case, for very fundamental social reasons, and as a result they have a special sense of community and culture. As with many things in life, simple generalizations like “handicapped” just don’t really work. It’s messy.