Vee Yee Chong

Vee Yee was a bright student at his schools. He was born deaf and has been an inspiration to Deaf students who are still studying at school. Malaysian Federation of the Deaf awarded him “Best student of Year 2002 in Academic”.  Vee Yee has a diploma and BA in Computing Studies, graduated in 2006 from KDU College. He was selected to deliver a valediction on his diploma graduation day.  He also received a merit scholarship for the duration of his study at KDU College.
He has experience in teaching sign language at Pusat Majudiri Y for the Deaf for almost eight years. He is the co-editor, working on a basic sign language text book for hearing adult learners for Pusat Majudiri Y for the Deaf with other Sign Language Instructors.
He has experience of working with Deaf youths and teenagers in various camps. He is one of the DACSA (Deaf Against Child Sexual Abuse) facilitators and has facilitated in many camps/programmes in several states since 2004. He stepped into promoting HIV/AIDS awareness programmes to the Deaf Community. He is truly a role model for his community. In addition he has participated in various conferences, Deaf events locally and internationally.
He worked as Production Editor for a publishing international company for more than 4 years and then as teacher for Deaf students at Community Service Centre for the Deaf for 6 months. While he was working, he took his first Master’s degree in Linguistics at University of Malay for 2 years and half. His thesis is “The Impact of Sign Language Exposure and Use in Deaf Children’s Acquisition of Vocabulary.”
At the end of his days as the teacher and completion of his thesis, he left for the US to pursue the second Master’s degree with the World Deaf Leadership Scholarship, awarded by the Foundation Nippon. Currently, he is majoring in Deaf Cultural Studies at Gallaudet.

A Case Study of Sign Language Endangerment: Ban Khor Sign Language.

There have been studies on spoken languages being endangered. Nettle and Romaine (2002:2) have found “about half the known languages of the world have vanished in the last five hundred years.” A language disappears every fortnight. Are there any similarities for Deaf Sign Languages? Since linguistics and anthropological study of sign languages in the 20th century began, the interesting findings are being recognized that the Deaf communities around the world are vulnerable to the declining of indigenous or native sign languages. While some sign languages are on risk of being murdered, other new sign languages are emerging. In other cases, the native sign languages are replaced or heavily influenced by American Sign Language. The driving causes of this language genocide in some parts of the world are because of government, medical, and/or pedagogy systems. While an overview will be presented briefly, the main focus will be on Thailand’s indigenous sign language: Ban Khor Sign Language which was rejected by these systems.