This Week’s Five Signs

January 11, 2006 @ 2:33 am | Filed under: ASL lessons, Sign Language

I have another great ASL website to recommend this week: ASL Pro. Like the ASL Browser, it offers free video clips demonstrating thousands of signs. There’s a special category for signs especially pertinent to little ones (“ASL for Babies”) as well as a separate dictionary of religious signs. There’s even have a quiz option so you can test yourself! Very cool.

Unfortunately, I cannot link directly to individual words in its dictionary (just as with the ASL Browser), so the links below will take you to still-photo-demonstrations of the signs. As always, I recommend looking them up in one of the video dictionaries in order to see the sign in motion.

OK, on to this week’s new signs:

More.

Finish (or “all done”).

Want.

Need.

Help. *The illustration for this sign shows a closed fist on top of a flat palm. I learned it with the thumb of the fist pointing upward, as it is demonstrated on the ASL Browser. Also, this is a “directional” sign—while making the sign, your hands move in the direction the “help” goes—from me to you, for example, if I’m offering to help you; or from you to me, if I’m asking you to help me. The ASL Browser demos the basic sign (without direction), which uses a slight upward movement of the hands.

And a bonus: the sign for YOU is, not surprisingly, simply pointing your index finger at the person to whom you’re speaking. Which means you can now sign:

“Do you want more?” Sign: YOU WANT MORE, raising your eyebrows and leaning forward slightly to make it a question.

and:

“You need help!” Sign: YOU NEED HELP

and lots of other simple sentences using last week’s words (yes, no, please, thank you, and hello).