This Week’s Five Signs
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).
Resources for Learning American Sign Language (ASL)
Learning American Sign Language
Unsolicited Signing Time Commercial
The Speech Banana
Tell it to Me, Baby
