ASL inquiry
The funniest thing happened this week…
I ended up having to fly home for some family things and ran into an old teacher of mine. She worked as the youth worker in my high school, so I stopped to say hello. Out of nowhere while I was talking, she stopped me and said “hey I have a book for you.” From her filing cabinet she pulls a book on how to learn sign language. The book was called Signing how to speak with your hands by Elaine Costello. What are the odds! She had no clue I was doing this project, nor had I ever expressed any interest in learning ASL. I had started my ASL journey just three weeks earlier and here she was giving me this book.
The book: Signing how to speak with your hands by Elaine Costello
This week I decided to learn from my book, which I will insert photos of. The common phrases section overlaps with the common phrases I learned in week 2 and continued to practice in week 3, which made the process a little easier. There are several pages of common phrases, there for this week I am aiming to focus on the first three pages.
World day of the deaf
While looking into the deaf community, I learned that there is an international day for the deaf, where sign language is celebrated and appreciated. This holiday passed not too long ago, during the week of the deaf, the same week I started this learning process. The national day of the deaf is on the last Monday of September, which this year fell on September 26. The purpose of the national day of the deaf is to bring awareness to the challenges and difficulties of the deaf community and also to highlight the importance of sign language to all people. This day was started in 1958 by the world federation of the deaf. They want to raise awareness of deaf rights and struggles so that everyone can be a little more accommodating. Another thing it raises awareness for is hearing loss. Many people will face preventable hearing loss in their lifetime, that they potentially could have saved had they known more about the topic
At the beginning of the book, I read about compound words. Much like in English, two words can be compounded to make a new word. An example of this in sign language is the sign “lunch.” The word “lunch” is made up of the signs for “eat” and “noon.” The first section of my book is labeled common phrases, where it teaches me how to say basic words and phrases, such as hello and how are you. This got me thinking, how do you ask a question in sign language? Often times in English we convey a question by simply raising our voices at the end, however that is not an option in sign language. I looked in the front of my book and was able to find the answer. There are two ways to ask a question in ASL you can either put a question mark at the beginning of your sentence, which looks like drawing a question mark in the air or you can simply hold your sign a little longer at the end.
The word of the week this week is my favorite color : Purple – Sign the letter P and turn your wrist
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