Trapped in Makaton

Carrie and Megan talk about Makaton, an artificial sign-based system, particularly Sara Novič's article about it.

Transcript

Carrie Gillon: Hi and welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast. The podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Megan Figueroa: I'm Megan Figueroa. 

Carrie: And I'm Carrie Gillon.

Megan: Here we are in November. 

Carrie: I know. 

Megan: I know. It's 2025. A real cluster of a year is almost over.

Carrie: It's been, yes, one of the weirdest years that I've been alive for. That is for sure. 

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: Then this week made the weirdness even extra.

Megan: Oh, yeah. I don't know what's happening in my country. I don't know.

Carrie: Feels like maybe the AI bubble's about to pop. Maybe.

Megan: Yeah. If a extraterrestrial came to this world right now and I had to explain, like, summarize what's happening, I don't think I could. I'm just like, "I don't know."

Carrie: Well, I would say you could say something about the American empire crumbling.

Megan: True. Yeah. 

Carrie: Yeah. No, there's a lot going on. That is for sure.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: But I thought today, I saw something on Blue Sky. Actually, let me cite the person who posted this and I think maybe wrote it. What started me like down this bit of a rabbit hole, although I didn't go down as far the rabbit hole as I probably should have because, I don’t know. Yeah, it is a bit rough. Okay. Yeah. Sara Novic, I think. 

Megan: Oh, yeah. She's a great disability activist. 

Carrie: Okay. She wrote something about Makaton. Have you heard of this? 

Megan: Makaton. 

Carrie: Makaton. 

Megan: No.

Carrie: No. Me either. 

Megan: No. 

Carrie: Okay. I was intrigued because this is what she posted. “I will not fight with people on threads about Makaton. I will not fight with people on threads about Makaton. I will not.” And then posted the article. 

Megan: So it's enough of a thing that people are trying to fight with her on it on Blue Sky. 

Carrie: It's a huge thing, but we've never heard about it because it's not here in North America yet.

Megan: Okay. But she's a deaf activist, so she's probably like, she's looking everywhere, like seeing what's happening. 

Carrie: Yeah. 

Megan: Like in the know. She's in the know.

Carrie: She's definitely in the know. Okay, so back in 1973, a speech therapist introduced 145 BSL signs, British Sign Language signs, to deaf, intellectually disabled patients and staff so that they could communicate with one another. This woman is called Margaret Walker, and she was also studying language acquisition, trying to prove that intellectually disabled people could learn these signs. Turns out, of course, they could.

Megan: Sure. Yeah. She took like a subset of BSL and was like, "Well, they're going to learn these." She's not making up signs. These are part of BSL. 

Carrie: Right. 

Megan: Okay.

Carrie: At this point, 145 as far as I know, real BSL signs. Maybe they were modified, I don't know. But probably not. Probably the first ones weren't. That's the very, very beginning. Then she's like, "Okay, maybe we can introduce more," because 145 is pretty limiting right? So she with two other people created a slightly larger vocabulary. I think it started off as 350, it's now 450 signs. Most of them BSL, but not all of them, and they trademarked it. Makaton comes from their names, Ma for Margaret, Ka for Kathy and Ton for Tony.

Megan: Oh. 

Carrie: Yeah. The anguish. The anguish from your voice. 

Megan: No, like I was scared. I was getting scared. I was like, where is this going? Did not predict that. 

Carrie: Yeah. 

Megan: I was like, "What?” That sounds like some sort of like Transformer or like some villain or something. 

Carrie: Right.

Megan: But where did that come from? Oh, my God. And they trademarked it. 

Carrie: They trademarked it. They charge people to learn Makaton.

Megan: No.

Carrie: Yeah.

Megan: At this point, it sounds like there are additional signs that aren't necessarily BSL signs.

Carrie: Yeah. Well, there are many differences between full sign language BSL and this, I guess I would call it maybe a pidgin. I don't know what to call it. But anyway, it's not a full language for sure. There's many differences, but one of them is, yeah, some of the signs are different. For example, water, more and cat have different signs in BSL and in Makaton. 

Megan: Okay.

Carrie: I was surprised at those three. I thought those three would be the same.

Megan: I thought that they would be part of the initial vocabulary of the BSL signs, because water certainly is like...

Carrie: Water and more. Maybe cat would come later. Not a hugely important sign necessarily, right?

Megan: Right. I'm also like thinking of this from a perspective of like having studied child language acquisition. Some of the vocabulary inventories that people use, it's just like really relevant words that probably come up that children learn earlier because it's just relevant to the environment, and so water would definitely be a very quick word to learn.

Carrie: These are not necessarily young children. These might be older children.

Megan: Right. Absolutely. Yeah, totally.

Carrie: But water, you would think, would be definitely top of the list no matter what, because humans need water.

Megan: Exactly. That's really weird.

Carrie: And then supposedly the sign for crab in Makaton looks like the sign for undulating vagina in BSL.

Megan: What the fuck? Oh, no.

Carrie: Yeah. 

Megan: Oh, that's layered. 

Carrie: Yes, layered. That's one way of putting it.

Megan: Okay. Also, why is crab part of Makaton?

Carrie: I don't know. I'm guessing like over time they added a bunch of animals because you're probably going to talk about animals with children, right?

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: I don't know.

Megan: We do. What's the number?

Carrie: 450. 

Megan: 450. I'm still surprised that crab's in there, but yeah.

Carrie: Also, food, a right? Maybe it's a very common food in the UK. I don’t know.

Megan: Yeah. Maybe. 

Carrie: I feel like no, but maybe. Basically what they did is they force it into English syntax. From my understanding of doing some research, and I know I could have done way, way more, like there's just so much. But, my understanding is they use it mostly with children who are hearing, and so it's a kind of like an add on to the English. That's why it's always going to be an SVO order, because that's what English is.

Megan: Do you know what BSL is?

Carrie: It's apparently topic comment. 

Megan: Okay, so they're hearing, but they're diagnosed for some sort of intellectual disability.

Carrie: Well, I think some of them are deaf, but because I think probably what happened originally is Margaret Walker saw these children who were both intellectually disabled and deaf. But it seems like almost all the research, or at least the research that I could find on Google Scholar, was children who are hearing and so are learning English at the same time. 

Megan: But like their parents are paying these people. 

Carrie: Well, no. Well, okay, the parents might be paying for some training, but it's more, I believe, used in institutions like schools.

Megan: Okay.

Carrie: That's where most of the training money, as far as I can tell, that the training money is coming from.

Megan: Yeah, they're basically selling this to schools or to like speech pathologists or like educational psychs.

Carrie: Right.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: Probably. Yeah.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: There are some kids that only are taught Makaton, though. I did receive one case study of a deaf girl with, they think, an intellectual disability, and the only language that she learned was Makaton, at least, yeah, as far as I can tell anyway. So her vocabulary and her ability to communicate was so limited as a result.

Megan: Was this in the 80s? What are we talking? Do you know?

Carrie: Let me see. I think I still have it pulled up. Let me see. Yeah, she only used Makaton until the age of 15 when she was finally sent to a school for deaf children. 

Megan: No, till 15? 

Carrie: Yeah. And sorry, what was your question again?

Megan: Is this like in the 80s? Because you said the 70s is when they like trademarked it.

Carrie: It does not say when this happened. 

Megan: It's a little strange, but okay.

Carrie: The article is from 2011, though. 

Megan: I'm guessing we'll get to it, but is this a thing that's still happening?

Carrie: 100%. 

Megan: Okay. All right. [crosstalk]

Carrie: That's the whole thing. That's why she's fighting with people on threads over this, because parents are super invested. They think it works for their children. The studies that I found, if the children were hearing, it did seem like it was helping them.

Megan: Because they were getting English, too.

Carrie: Because they were getting English, so this is just like an extra little boost to like help you, I guess, learn concepts. I don't know. Again, I probably could have done a deeper dive into all of the studies, but it looked like of the, what was available, there was some evidence that it worked for those children.

Megan: I'm just thinking, okay, that's the reason why we have this very lucrative baby sign thing going on right now. 

Carrie: Yeah, it's a similar thing right? 

Megan: Yeah. But I just don't understand why they had to create their own signs. 

Carrie: Right. 

Megan: Like, that's super sketchy to me. 

Carrie: And trademark it. 

Megan: That's what must have motivated creating their own because you can't trademark BSL.

Carrie: Right. 

Megan: Yeah. It's sketchy as hell.

Carrie: Yeah. So if you're going to do that, I think you kind of have to do it from scratch. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: There's still problems with it. There’s still some really horrible problems with it, but you're stealing from a language and a community. Like commoditizing it.

Megan: Yeah. Oh, yeah. The same thing with baby sign. I don't think a lot of people realize how it's being sold to parents and caregivers of children that are hearing. We still don't talk about what it's like for deaf and hard of hearing children to grow up and learn language or operate in this world. It's interesting that people are able to want baby sign for their kids, but not engage with the bigger picture of language and privilege and stuff like that.

Carrie: It's true. I mean, people are busy. 

Megan: It's true. Yeah.

Carrie: What you should what you should think is, “Oh, this is actually helping my child, therefore, it's probably going to be helpful for other children. Let me support it in some way or other.”

Megan: Right. But we still have oralism. 

Carrie: Yes, we do. One of the things that I find really strange is that Makaton claims to have a proprietary register shift. I don't even understand what they mean by that. Like this is a different register of BSL, I guess, and so that's what makes it proprietary. But like, no.

Megan: A different register? No, that's not what register... 

Carrie: Exactly.

Megan: That's not what we mean when we say register as linguists.

Carrie: No, it's not what we mean when we say register. No, like, no.

Megan: When we were like operating in the world, we have different registers that we use with different people or whatever, and like, it'll be a subset of our language right? So we might not use certain other words or signs. But that's not what's happening with them. 

Carrie: No.

Megan: Like, yeah.

Carrie: No. Another thing that's different is that BSL has a bunch of grammatical markers, so like nodding your head once at the end of an utterance to say, “Okay, I'm done.” Or shaking your head for negation and other things. Makaton either simplifies them or doesn't use them at all, which makes sense to me because they're not thinking about it as a full system. It's just like these bits of vocabulary strung together to support the English.

Megan: You're 100% right. That's why deaf advocates will talk about how those sign language gloves are like... I mean, they're just never going to work because it's a whole body kind of situation. There are other things at play, it's not just the hands.

Carrie: No, it's like so much is happening on people's faces, like eyebrows raising. And yeah, so much is happening. Yeah, the gloves. It's always the gloves. Every few years, there's new gloves.

Megan: Every few years. Yeah, because people, I mean, they think that they're doing the right thing, but it's misguided because they don't actually talk to the people that, or interact with the people that it actually impacts, or they want to impact.

Carrie: Yes. I also saw, I didn't read it because I'm just annoyed with everything. But there was also an article about an AI that would help translate Makaton into written English. I was like, why? For what purpose? It's not a full system. Like, what? But again, the tiers of AI shit that I hate, I'm like, whatever. I don't care at this point. It's the gen AI right now that I'm like most angry at, so, fine. You go do your thing. Just leave me alone. 

Megan: I know.

Carrie: Okay. I guess if you were trying to use Makaton as a real system, it would sound, or not sound, it would look like the equivalent of caveman speech? I don't know.

Megan: Because it's like the way we think of caveman, so, it's like truncated. It's just like words. It's missing a lot of the grammar.

Carrie: I assume so. If you don’t really have that much of the grammatical markers, and you're also putting it into this order that doesn't really make... Well, I mean, maybe there are sign languages that are SVO. My understanding is there aren't. But probably there are. There's something that does everything. So, maybe that part's fine, but it just sounds like, from my understanding, that's, yeah, a little bit more Tarzan-ish.

Megan: Remind me, Margaret Walker, was she a speech language pathologist? 

Carrie: Speech therapist. 

Megan: Okay. I don't know what speech therapists knew in the 70s, but I know with developmental language disorder, there are some troubles getting the grammatical bits down, so maybe that's a motivating factor. But then she went wild with it.

Carrie: Like, yeah, I kind of feel like the beginning, you're like, “Oh, I understand where this is going.” Because especially at the very beginning, there probably was no communication happening, really, especially for the deaf, intellectually disabled children, right? This was like a huge step up. But then her brain goes to, "Ha-ha, let me make all the money I can make."

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie:  What? They also claim that limited vocabulary is necessary for communicating with people with intellectual disabilities. 450, though? I don't know. I feel like intellectually disabled people can learn more than 450 words.

Megan: Yes. That's a level of what dogs can learn at this point.

Carrie: Well, no. Maybe parrots, maybe. 

Megan: Okay. 

Carrie: Maybe. But, yeah, it's still very low. It's still way lower than...

Megan: Well, it's offensive [inaudible]. 

Carrie: It is offensive.

Megan: It makes intellectual disabilities a monolith.

Carrie: It's also mentioned in the article that I'm talking about, but if you go to the website, the person on the page is someone with Down syndrome. That's definitely different than many other intellectual disabilities, right?

Megan: Is it Down syndrome? I'm not remembering my speech-language stuff. But I think they actually tend to have higher vocabularies than people assume. 

Carrie: Yeah. That's exactly what I was thinking. These 450 concepts are taught in a specific order with eight stages. Stage one has things like very basic needs, like eat and drink. That's where I thought water would be.

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: Then later it gets more complex, supposedly. But I don't know how complex, because, again, there's just too much. It's like, oh, dear. 

Megan: Well, it's like they're trying to manufacture how language is organically learned with the words, or stuff like food and drink that just come naturally earlier for children because we need those things. But then, again, how do you end up by making your own signs? How is that the endgame? But, yeah, I can kind of see the grouping concepts together and kind of building on.

Carrie: Yeah. That part makes sense. Yeah, for sure.

Megan: Then somehow you get to the point where you have crab, which is, like, if you sign it a little bit wrong...

Carrie: Undulating vagina.

Megan: Yes, exactly. 

Carrie: Apparently in the UK, a lot of people don't understand that there's a difference between Makaton and BSL. Like, they get conflated a lot. 

Megan: Oh, that's terrible. That's not good. 

Carrie: And so, people will purposely sign up for Makaton not realizing they're not learning the real language right? They're trying to be more inclusive, and they're so confused when they get pushback from deaf people. This is according to Adam Schembri, who was cited in the article. 

Megan: Oh, yeah. 

Carrie: It's like, yes, it makes total sense. 

Megan: Hey Adam. Yeah. 

Carrie: Yes, hey, Adam. Yeah, so it's marketed as a real language, but to me it feels more like a pidgin. 

Megan: Right. But the layperson is not really going to question those kind of things. If it's marketed as a language, okay, great. They're going to sign their kids up maybe for something. Like that 15-year-old that was very limited until she was 15. I don't know if her parents were sold it the same way, but, yeah, that's...

Carrie: Let me go back to that because it was a sad story. She became deaf following meningitis infection at the age of 18 months, and her parents did not want to send her to a boarding school, and they couldn't move, so she went to the nearest mainstream school with a special unit for people with special educational needs. But she was the only deaf person in the school. 

Megan: I was going to say. 

Carrie: So the teachers could only use Makaton. That was the only thing they could do.

Megan: I think a lot of kids, unfortunately, deaf kids, are stuck in that situation, where there's not a deaf school nearby. And so they're just put in that subset of children that have special needs, and it’s like, but are they getting what they need at all there?

Carrie: No, and she wasn't. Who knows how much better she could have been off if she had gotten to the deaf school sooner. 

Megan: Is Margaret Walker still around? 

Carrie: She's apparently still alive, at least according to Wikipedia.  She's in her late 80s, though. Mid to late 80s.

Megan: Still making that royalty money. 

Carrie: Yeah. 

Megan: Is it mostly used in the UK then? You said it wasn't in North America yet.

Carrie: Yeah, so there are other countries that use their own localized version of Makaton. Many. I can't remember all of them, and I didn't count how many of them. But there's, for example, Cyprus, France, India, Kuwait. But there's a bunch of other countries. They use the signs from local sign languages, but it's the same ideology, it's the same structure. Whatever the main language is, oral language is, I'm guessing that's the word order that they use.

Megan: Does she get money from that? 

Carrie: Yeah, it's all Makaton. 

Megan: Okay. They use the Makaton signs that they made up, but do they use the local sign language for the...?

Carrie: I think they use the signs. I don't know exactly how much they localize, but I think they localize probably more than you're thinking. So they're using the local sign language, whichever one.

Megan: Okay. 

Carrie: But it's still a subset. It's still the 450. It's still the word order of the relevant spoken language blah, blah, blah. 

Megan: The 450, when you said that again, it strikes me as lazy. Did they not want to create more? Because a manufactured language is hard to do.

Carrie: That's true. Oh, yeah, constructing a language is difficult, but there's been decades to continue to develop it. At least bring in more concepts.

Megan: Absolutely. But treating the intellectually disabled and the deaf as a monolith and assuming that they can only learn so much. Well, not the deaf, but certainly the intellectually disabled.

Carrie: Yes. It's the intellectually disabled that they're treating as a monolith, yeah. Really worryingly, like I mentioned before, people are misunderstanding that Makaton and BSL are different, so people are trying to sign up for Makaton so that they can communicate with deaf people, so like Ambulance crews or whatever. And it's like, no, because they're not going to recognize some of the signs at the very least. And also, yeah, that's not going to get you very far. 450 concepts is not enough to talk about a serious medical thing.

Megan: No, I was going to say, I'm sure it doesn't get very deep into medical.

Carrie: No, it can't. 

Megan: No. 

Carrie: So another thing that Sara points out is that apparently 50 to 80% of people with Down syndrome have hearing loss. I did not know that. If you have Down syndrome and you're deaf and you're only learning Makaton, that is language deprivation.

Megan: 100%. Call it what it is, yeah.

Carrie: This all feels very cultish and very controlling. Like, there's only certain concepts you're allowed to learn. There's only certain ways of communicating that you're allowed to do, particularly if you are deaf. Because at least with the children who are hearing, they're accessing another language on top of this. But the ones who are trapped in Makaton… 

Megan: Trapped in Makaton. That should be the title of this episode. 

Carrie: Sure. Why not? Yeah. 

Megan: You're 100% right. And Sara's right, language deprivation. Language deprivation is a huge issue for the deaf and hard of hearing, period. Because of this, still there's this push for oralism. There's this push to assume that the kid, when old enough, can get cochlear implants, so there isn't a hard push to get them to learn sign. Then you take these comorbidities or these complex medical cases and make assumptions that these 450 concepts are... Yeah, maybe it's as cultish as you say and it's about control and, I don't know. Yeah, why did they stop at 450? Why did they choose the words that they did? And why is crab in it? I still am obsessed that Crab is one of the 450 words. Because I've seen, you know, again, doing child language development, I've seen lists of the most frequent words, and at least North American English, and the ones that children learn and comparing those. And I'm just going to have to guess that crab is not in the first 450 most frequent words in English, North American English, at least.

Carrie: I wonder if it depends on where you're located.

Megan: So, if you're in the... I don't know. Where do they have crabs? Not in the desert. 

Carrie: All the coastlines, right?

Megan: Sure.

Carrie: Yeah. Maybe not Northern Arctic, but certainly the Pacific and the Atlantic coast, there's crabs. I don't know. To me, it doesn't feel as crazy as it does to you because I grew up with crabs. 

Megan: That's true. I grew up in, yes, you're right, in a desert. Okay, so here's the problem when I say something like this, is that most of the most frequent words in English are probably words that Makaton doesn't have because they don't give a shit about grammar.

Carrie: Right. Yeah, like that.

Megan: Because it's probably prepositions and articles and those words.

Carrie: Yeah. So, ignoring those, looking at more of the content words instead.

Megan: Right. Maybe crab gets in there. But, yeah, that's a good point that I'm now thinking about. Yeah, they're not getting the word because or...

Carrie: Yeah, as far as I know, none of the grammatical glue, right? 

Megan: Yeah. Well, oh, my God, that's so limiting. It's so limiting. 

Carrie: Apparently, according to Sara, the British Deaf Association has been trying to work with Makaton so that users of Makaton can transition to BSL or ISL, Irish Sign Language, and move on into true fluency. They're trying to help them out. And maybe over time, they will be convinced to stop being quite so controlling and actually move into a real language. Because maybe instead of teaching the particular signs, they can teach the order that makes the most sense for kids of certain ages or something like that. Maybe they can still be involved in the education system without having so much of a stranglehold. I don't know.

Megan: Is that Sara's opinion that that should happen or is she like, just get rid of Makaton?

Carrie: I think she just thinks that it should be gone, just gone. I don't think she thinks that the British Deaf Association should be working with them.

Megan: Yeah, because it seems like a waste of human power to focus on trying to fix Makaton to...

Carrie: I think they're thinking strategically, right? Like, this is what's being used in institutions like schools, how can we break the stranglehold? How can we get these kids what they need, particularly the deaf kids? Now, simply attacking Makaton might not work. That's what I'm thinking how they're thinking.

Megan: So then, should we assume that parents are also learning Makaton?

Carrie: I think some of them are, yeah.

Megan: I'm curious about the ones that wouldn't. 

Carrie: Well, if you've got a hearing child, you don't really need to. 

Megan: Oh, okay. Well, I'm talking about the ones that are deaf, I guess.

Carrie: Yeah. I don't know. I'm not going to make any claims one way or the other. I don't know. Okay. So you asked about North America, you asked about other countries. Yes, apparently they're working on North America next. That's the next big push. So look forward to see that.

Megan: Yeah. You heard it here first.

Carrie: Yeah, it I cannot believe I'd literally never heard of this at all in my life. It's true that I'm not in the sign language world, and I don't live in the UK, but I don't know, I feel like I have a lot of contact with the UK. The fact that like I've never come across this at all is a bit surprising to me.

Megan: Right. I'm just thinking like, I followed John Henar and like everything he would post, and maybe because he was in North America, it just wasn't relevant. That's why I missed out on that. And maybe also I followed Sara, like I wonder… Maybe she doesn't talk about it a lot, but she obviously is in the know, but yeah. It doesn't sound like she likes to talk about it.

Carrie: Yeah. Well I think she wants to talk about it, but it's going to be a very negative way and people are not happy about that, because they think it's like this good thing that's going to help their kids. Then again the research is limited. The research that I did find for hearing kids did seem to suggest it was helpful. Who knows if that's true though, right? But also there's not that much research, like the research that I could find was almost all of it from a perspective of, "Oh, Makaton is good. Let's see how good it is."

Megan: Ooh. So they're going in with the assumption. With this, like...

Carrie: A lot of it. Yeah. 

Megan: Yeah. That it’s good, so let's see what the results or what impacts it's making. Instead of, let's see if it's good or bad. 

Carrie: Right. Yeah. Even me saying like, it looks like it's good for hearing children, I don't know if that's actually true, because again, I'd have to dig deeper. I'd have to do a lot more research. My gut is telling me these people already had an assumption that it was going to be good.

Megan: I'm just thinking with hearing children, with intellectual disability, you could get the same effect if you were teaching concepts with English words in that scaffolded way.

Carrie: Probably some other scaffolding would work just as well. Yeah, probably. And like, I guess if they were learning, “Hey, these are real signs in a real language that may come in use later, if you ever want to learn this other language,” I would feel less icky about it.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: I don't know. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: Because I do think signing can be helpful for children. I do. That's not a bad thing necessarily right?

Megan: No.

Carrie: But just everything else about the whole system is…

Megan: Especially the trademark part. Yeah.

Carrie: Honestly, as soon as I realized what [inaudible] Makaton, I was like, "Okay, what is this?" And then as soon as I realized what it actually stood for, I was like, "Oh, that's some cult shit right there." Like, it feels like a [inaudible] cliché. Just the name itself.

Megan: Yeah. People's egos.

Carrie: Right?

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: I understand the impulse to be like, "Oh, these children, we need to be able to communicate with them." Great.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: But then the next step to be like, "I'm going to trademark this shit." What?

Megan: Right. Especially since they didn't conduct tons of research into its impact. I doubt Margaret Walker was doing that stuff. 

Carrie: Well, she was doing research. She was, but like...

Megan: On Makaton.

Carrie: Yes.

Megan: Okay.

Carrie: But again, I don't trust research coming from her right?

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: Like the initial study showing that they were acquiring it. Great, that's fine. That's not a surprise and also you do need to do that basic stuff. But like anything past that, I'm like, "No, can't be you." But yeah, no, she was doing research at least into the 80s that I saw.

Megan: Okay. But yeah, you can't evaluate yourself.

Carrie: Especially after you have trademarked it, like no. 

Megan: Then you are financially invested.

Carrie: Exactly.

Megan: That is a conflict of fucking interest. 

Carrie: Yes. So I'm just like, "No, I can't trust that. I'm not going to click on that link."

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: Maybe I should have though, just to see what she was saying. But I was just like, "No, I want real studies." And I couldn't really find anything that I felt was good. I just found one meta study that was more neutrally written.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: Yeah. Anyway.

Megan: Oh my goodness. What a wild… Yeah.

Carrie: What a wild ride, right?

Megan: It was a wild ride. I just had no idea where Makaton was going. The trademark just threw me off kilter. There's a lot going on there.

Carrie: Yeah. All because, just the way she wrote that post. I was like, "I think I need to read this." I started reading it and I was like, "What is going on?"

Megan: Yeah. No kidding. Okay. Now let’s see what happens when they try to bring it to North America.

Carrie: Oh, I know.

Megan: I think it's going to do well because the baby sign has taken over. It's going to, I think, fit right in.

Carrie: It's true. But I wonder if people are going to be annoyed that it costs money. I think I saw something that maybe it was in her post, maybe it was somewhere else in her article I mean, that they're going to charge like $650 in North America. Yeah, [crosstalk] I don't know. Maybe. You're probably right. They're probably going to be like, "Yay." But part of me is like, "Ah. But we already have stuff. Is this really going to take us by storm?" I don't know, maybe. It's very possible.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: But anyway they’re trying.

Megan: Capitalism.

Carrie: It's interesting that it’s taken them this long to try. Which also makes me wonder if there's a reason, there's a structural reason why they haven't yet. If it's just like, "Oh, like all the European countries are right next door." But [inaudible] is further than that, still kind of in their sphere, and they just felt like North America was just too far. I don't know.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: Anyways, Makaton. 

Megan: Makaton.

Carrie: Transformer.

Megan: Exactly. It does feel like that. I'm just imagining something very boxy, like...

Carrie: Yeah.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: Makaton! Makaton! Makaton!

Megan: Oh my God.

Carrie: All right. Well, anyways, I hope everyone's enjoying the last bit of our 2025. Hope 2026 is somewhat less wild. We'll see.

Megan: Yeah. We can always hope.

Carrie: But every year, I swear since 2013, every year I've been like, we keep saying next year is going to be better, but...

Megan: I know. 

Carrie: It just gets worse.

Megan: I know. Unprecedented is like a word that has no meaning anymore. Oh my God. 

Carrie: Yeah. Anyways. All right. Well, I guess let's leave our listeners with one final message.

Megan: Don't be an asshole. 

Carrie:  Don't be an asshole. The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

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