ASL, Week 1: Hot and Cold
So it’s the first week of me learning sign language. And though I have learned some various signs before, it was never with the expectation that I would retain any of the knowledge.
I figured the first thing to do would be to refresh my memory of the basic ASL alphabet.
Eventually, I’ll get a working web camera so I can post videos of myself doing these signs…
ASL Alphabet
For the most part, I have them down, but there are a few that consistently give me trouble. In particular, I often mix up “D” and “F,” and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out what “H” was supposed to look like (this video shows the sign a bit better, but I started out with some cavemen-like sketches).
However, after countless repetitions, I think I have the hang of it (once again, I’ll post a video once I get that camera).
First Steps to Acquiring a Language
After learning the alphabet, I figured I should get a ASL learning book or kit to see what would be the best thing to learn. And though I did scour the internet for reliable ASL learning tools (many were quite helpful), I just didn’t get around to picking up the book. Instead, I stumbled upon and subsequently browsed through videos of people signing songs.
One particular video was of a kid signing “Hot n Cold” by Katy Perry. For whatever reason, I found it strangely entertaining (the song is very catchy, but I’m not particularly a fan of it, or Katy Perry in general).
“Hot n Cold” in ASL
And though I have complete faith that this kid’s interpretation of this girl’s signs from a video posted on the internet set to a pop song were fairly accurate, I decided to check to see what each sign really meant before adding it to my vocabulary.
Using some of the sources I talked about earlier, I started to come up with my own interpretation of the song. Most notably, I used the ASL Pro website (which has some good video demonstrations of signs) and the ASLU website (which has more descriptions of each sign, how they are formed, and when to use them).
What’s nice about Katy Perry’s song is that it has a lot of great and useful opposite words that a beginner can really use (ie. Hot vs. Cold, Up vs. Down, Wrong vs. Right, etc.). And though the song is very catchy, I decided to only learn the chorus to make sure the amount I was learning wasn’t too much for me at once. If anything, I found that it really is much easier to learn new words when they are set to music.
It’s at this point that I’m a little glad I don’t have my web camera. If I did, I would have had to post the video of me signing the chorus to Katy Perry’s “Hot n Cold.” Maybe I should reconsider getting a camera at all…
Words Learned This Week
- [Alphabet]
- Hot
- Cold
- Yes
- No
- In
- Out
- Up
- Down
- Wrong
- Right (correct)
- Black
- White
- Fight
- Separate
- Kiss
- Unite
- Stay
- Go
- Want/Don’t Want
- Break (apart)
- Apologize (“sorry”)
SUCCESS!
Related posts:
- ASL, Week 3: Similes
- New Goal: Learn American Sign Language
- ASL, Week 2: Pronouns
- ASL, Week 4: Possessives
- Boredom (Week 5): Performance Weekend
May 16, 2010
Author: Street Saint
Tags: ASL, Katy Perry, Music Posted in: Learn Sign Language
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