It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of our recently more active member "liane" (Liane Holland) who passed away on or about July 22, 2009 while still in recovery after having received some type of surgery.

She will be missed.

oooh!! we take so much for granted!! i feel shocked and sad.

Liane will be remembered for her love of animals.

Yes, she had a love for animals.

After doing some research I discovered that Liane Holland passed away in Reno, Nevada on July 22, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.

Liane was a Seventh Day Adventist who studied and helped others understand the teachings of Christ.

She had been severely hard of hearing and had taught a sign language class at the Bishop SDA Church.

She used a hearing dog trained to help her know if someone was calling her, if the phone rang, etc.

Thanks for sharing that Daryl.

I know some sign language. I had a roommate in college who was hard of hearing. (His name is Jerry. We were "Tom and Jerry.") Maybe some time I'll have a chance to work with the deaf or hard of hearing.

The deaf/hard of hearing are greatly misunderstood. Because they cannot speak, they are often assumed to be retarded, and/or treated like children.

I read somewhere that sign language is one of the 5 most difficult languages, the other being Russian, Japanese, Chinese and something else I can't remember.

I think sign language is easy. But Braille would be tough. I don't think I could do Braille. My fingers aren't that sensitive.

Nevertheless, if I had to lose either sight or hearing, I've often thought I might rather lose sight. Living in a soundless world would be extremely isolating, emotionally.

As for other languages...Russian and Japanese are both easy compared with Chinese. There's no comparison, really. The more Chinese I learn, the more I almost hate it. There are literally thousands of the characters that one must learn in order to be literate. On top of that, there are no "real" grammar rules. If you thought English had a lot of homonyms, try Chinese. Chinese is famous for the tones. But they bend all rules for the tones, depending on the particular combination with the next tone in the sequence. To top the whole thing off, even my Chinese teacher has admitted that Chinese tends to leave things unclear. It is difficult to be specific in Chinese. For example, the same spoken word can mean he, she, it, him, her, etc. If you want to say "things" in Chinese you say "east-west." If you want to say "east-west"...? Heh. I guess there's a way, but it starts to get tricky. Sometimes it's just not clear at all without context. And the Chinese like to shorten their sentences, leaving out all unnecessary context. I have had more than one in-depth discussion with my Chinese teacher about how to know what is being said given a particular phrase or sentence. Sigh. Suffice it to say, Chinese is difficult for more reasons than just the tones and ideograms. I have never before learned such a sloppy and ambiguous language before, grammatically speaking. There's no such thing as root words having similar meanings--every word must be memorized independently on its own merits.

Well, sorry to bore you all with my assessment of Chinese. I do know a little sign language, and I think ASL would be easy to learn...but the complicating factor would be the sign-language "dialects". There's actually more than one sign language. I have had people tell me about it. Each one fits a different culture.

I am sure Liane will be missed among those whom she ministered to through sign language, as well as for others.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

This is from Wiki:



I couldn't find the source which had sign language in the list.

It's not difficult to learn signs, but very difficult to learn sign language as a native signer would sign. The difficulty is that when one learns a language as a hearing person, one learns in terms of words, and one thinks in terms of words. Deaf people don't think in terms of words, but in terms of pictures. It's a totally different way of thought.

She and I settled our differences on the wild mustangs' thread and shared our mutual concerns for preserving wildlife and human traits of value.

Toward the end of that discussion she mentioned she was more aware than normal of death coming earlier than otherwise, as she was approaching a risky surgery and wasn't sure if she'd come through it. I noted the day of her surgery, which she mentioned to me, and hoped to meet her here again, but know that she rests now in our Lord's promise of his Coming.