I'm a hearing-able and "usually" verbal person, but since I'm autistic I sometimes go into verbal shutdown.
Both because of that and because I simply find sign languages to be important languages that should be more normalized around the globe, I really wanted to have the opportunity to learn my country's sign language properly.
However, whenever I mention that to certain people, they'll tell me it's useless and pointless because I don't know any deaf, hard-of-hearing or nonverbal individuals.
Like????? Excuse me?????
I don't know about other countries, but we don't have the chance to learn sign in Portuguese schools and I personally think we should be taught to communicate easily with everyone in our own country before being taught how to communicate with foreigns.
Sign languages are languages like any other. When my friends chose to learn French and German no one told them it was useless because they don't know any French or German people, so what's the big deal with sign language?
I apologize to any and every deaf, Deaf, hard-of-hearing, non-verbal or semiverbal person reading this for how rude some jerks out there can be.
(Also, sorry if hearing-abled isn't the correct term, I can’t really find an answer anywhere)