this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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It can be harder to surveil private conversations if everyone just used sign language. (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 19 hours ago by DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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I mean, you know how everyone carries a phone these days? If you use your voice, it could be potentially recorded.

So... we could just use sign language. Teach everyone sign language, use that whenever you wanna say something anti-government.

Its much easier to cover up cameras (or move out of sight) than to cover up microphones. And its unlikely people would want to leave their expensive phone in another room out of sight, so teaching everyone sign language seems like a straight-forward option.

Also, bonus: its very helpful for people with hearing problems if everyone knew sign language.

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[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 7 points 9 hours ago

At least for BSL there's a "hybrid language" called Sign-assisted English.

That's basically using BSL vocabulary with English grammar. You take your regular English sentence and do a 1:1 translation just replacing English words with BSL signs.

While Sign-assisted English isn't nearly as expressive as full sign language, it's super easy for an English speaker to get to a level where you can actually hold a conversation in it. It took me maybe 20h of practice to get to that point, which is much, much faster than I managed to in any other language. Because it's not a new language to learn, you are just substituting words.

At the same time, Sign-assisted English is quite easy to understand for most sign-language speakers, since they usually already understand the spoken language of the land, even if it's just so they can read, since most sign languages don't have a written form.

So it ends up being some form of pidgin hybrid language that's easy to learn and easy to understand for everyone involved.

If everyone would be able to use Sign-assisted spoken languages it would probably already be really helpful for everyone.

Funnyly enough, the group I started learning sign-assisted language with started using it even if no deaf person was part of the conversation, because at times sign language is much more useful than spoken languages. You can speak silently, you can easily communicate in noisy areas and it can be used over a much higher distance.

I think it would be really cool if sign-assisted spoken languages became a basic skill of everyone.