Signing Away

A few days ago, I started to learn some sign language from a friend. It's so much fun! We started out with some random words, like "rabbit", "apple", "candy" and "caterpillar", since they were words she remembered right away. Then, we moved on to words I was interested in, and even my first complete sentence. By now, I remember almost the whole alphabet, and maybe twenty random words plus the one sentence. I really hope to learn a lot more from her during the coming weeks and months; I've been interested in learning sign language ever since I met a deaf girl some years back and had to resort to notebook and pen in order to communicate with her. However, I never really started looking for resources, and now that I actually have a friend willing to teach me, I have the intention to learn as much as possible.

You are probably wondering why I take it on me to learn sign language although I know no one who is deaf and restricted to signing? Well, for one thing, I simply love languages, and only because sign language is non-verbal and doesn't have a written form doesn't mean it's no language in its own sense. On another note, I'm always up for a challenge, and sign language is a completely different kind of language compared to anything I have learnt so far. It's interesting, and it will be a skill not many people have.

I figure that even if I won't get over a basic vocabulary, that might actually be enough to start a conversation (and I still can get out my notebook and pen when I get stuck). The only thing I'm wondering: Should I count sign language towards the ten languages I want to know by the time I turn thirty? What do you guys think?