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@steward-of-the-pen Well, I had had some tips ready, but then that whole ‘oh, he’s a wolf thing kinda threw me’… but I’ll try to give some advice anyways. Here’s some things to just remember…

Deaf people, and possibly wolves I suppose, can sometimes still make some vocal sounds, such as grunting, ‘aaaah’, and humming. Even if they haven’t learned to speak, they can still have some vocal ability. I watched a video where a young man at a deaf school could only make one sound, a sort of low ‘eeeee’ sound, and he would change the way he said it slightly to try and express what he was meaning, short and hard when he was angry, etc.

Deaf people, and possibly wolves I suppose, are very sensitive to the other senses, especially feel. They sense vibrations, even very, very slight ones. There was a completely deaf singer on America’s Got Talent who sang barefoot to feel the vibrations of the music in the floor and stayed on pace that way.

Deaf people, and possibly wolves I suppose, use body language very much. Even when they use ASL to communicate, their faces are very expressive, their gestures sometimes extremely flamboyant. Maybe, and since it’s a fantasy book and you can make your wolves behave however you want, they can have a communication of body language solely – ear twitches, eye blinks, mouth positions, body stance, everything about them says something.

Wait… if he was normal would he even have the ability of human speech? I mean, do the other wolves talk English?

And even though your wolf can’t do ASL, (that is putting a very hilarious picture in my head of an ASL-ing wolf) there is this to remember –

Learning a deaf person’s language is very, very, very hard! I took a year of ASL a few years ago and even with all the things I could say, I still couldn’t have carried on a normal conversation with a deaf person. My mom took it for several years in college and even though she was somewhat fluent at the end, she still was never as good as her deaf classmates.

Learning a total new language is tough, and ASL is a language, plus the deaf community adds things of their own, name signs, inflections, home signs only used by them, plus signs change meanings whether you’re on the east or west coast. So if there is a way of communication that your wolf have established with people, anyone trying to learn it beyond understanding head up means yes head down means no is going to have a tough time. And when learning a language, for ninety percent of people they are able to string together words to make a sentence fairly well, but still not be able to translate someone speaking it to them.

Hope this helps!