The most recent Wolverine movie. Winter Carnival. The most recent Indiana Jones movie. The new Primus album. Going to the mechanic. Congress. Riding a bike.
What do these things have in common?
They're all disappointments.
XAP, Pizza, Charlie Hunter, ultimate, disc golf, American Sign Language.
What do these things have in common?
They're all totally awesome.
Today's challenge is to spend an hour practicing another language. I have chosen American Sign Language (ASL).
My initial reason for choosing ASL we pretty immature: I want to be able to talk about people in their presence without them knowing. Now that I'm learning, I'd like to actually do some good with it. I'm not really sure what that good is, but I'm open to suggestions.
I'm a little hesitant to say that I'm learning/practicing ASL. In researching how to go about learning I stumbled upon a great page for beginners to learn some basic ASL. He (Dr. Bill) is very clear in commenting that ASL is different than signed English. I hope to learn ASL but I'm a little nervous that I will fall back to signed English or Signed Exact English (SEE). ASL is it's own language with different grammar rules and word orders. It is more than just hand signals. It incorporates facial gestures and body movement as well.
The website I found is fantastic. It has lots of pictures and short video clips of so many of the words and phrases. It has lesson plans with a very logical path to learning the most useful words. The creator of the site is an ASL professor for California State University in Sacramento. His online persona is very friendly. The way he talks about ASL puts me at ease and makes me think I could actually learn it!
I think I will devote some time each day to practicing. I'm doing pretty good on lesson one.
I'm trying to picture you using sign language to subtly talk about someone behind their back. I'm pretty sure they would notice once you pointed at them and started making faces.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to try braille...