Christine Sun Kim: The enchanting music of sign language TED: Interpreter: Piano, "P," is my favorite musical symbol. It means to play softly. If you're playing a musical instrument and you notice a "P" in the score, you need to play softer. Two p's -- even softer. Four p's -- extremely soft. This is my drawing of a p-tree, which demonstrates no matter how many thousands upon thousands of p's there may be, you'll never reach complete silence. That's my current definition of silence: a very obscure sound. I like to share a little bit about the history of American Sign Language, ASL, plus a bit of my own background. French sign language was brought to America during the early 1800s, and as time went by, mixed with local signs, it evolved into the language we know today as ASL. So it has a history of about 200 years. I was born deaf, and I was taught to believe that sound wasn't a part of my life. And I believed it to be true. Yet...