ASL

ASL: My new language love.

ASL in this context does NOT stand for Age/Sex/Location (for all you Omeglers). To me, and for hundreds of thousands of others, stands for American Sign Language.

Being able to talk to with my hands, like learning 31 languages (probably 32 now), is something I never thought that I would learn nor would have the motivation to learn. I decided to scour YouTube and I found a few channels; one most important was the TWYH Blog (Talk With Your Hands). I paid the most attention to that because the teacher was able to give me the most basic information about ASL that I needed, and those things include:

-The Alphabet
-Numbers 1-10
-Pronouns
-Greetings
-Feelings
-Classifiers (Man, woman, girl, boy)

It was surprisingly easily, despite the fact that it was a lot of material. Most of the pronouns are symbols we use when gesticulating, which made having to recall commands a breeze. For instance, to say "you", you simply point your finger at the person you're speaking with. To say "your", you extend all your fingers and have your open palm  pointing towards the person you're conversing with, almost as if you're trying to use The Force with one hand.

The difficult part is finding good resources. There were a lot of videos on YouTube, but they were more Rosetta Stone-ish, in that they just gave you random words. You all now I'm in love with the Pimsleur method and the method from TWYH, which is to give you a sentence you can actually USE in conversation.

I think I'll have to find some REALLY reputable videos, because I don't want to spend money for an ASL Rosetta Stone. That would SERIOUSLY piss me off.

Another issue is finding deaf people or people who are fluent in ASL. I'm not sure there are any on my old campus, although there is one guy who always signs the commencement exercises for graduation. I might have to do some deep digging to find a practice buddy.

The language is soooooo fun. Sometimes when I'm bored now, I just practice the alphabet on both hands to build speed and accuracy, because let's face it, if I don't know the symbol for a word, I can always spell it out!

I can't wait to learn more.

Constructive comments, questions, advice, and tips are always welcome!

Until next time,

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: @mistercapoeira