ASL, Week 2: Pronouns

This week I finally made my way to the library and picked up some actual ASL books. Hooray! Now I don’t have to wonder if what I am learning is ASL or something someone made up.

I went to the ASL section of the public library and browsed around. There were a lot of good ASL books (although, not as many as I would have thought), so I grabbed a bunch.

It has been helpful to have all the books around because I’ve been reading up on ASL and learning a lot about not only the language, but the history and culture of deaf people. For instance, I found out that ASL is largely based on French Sign Language (FSL) rather than American English (or British English). This is because the original schools for the deaf in America collaborated a lot with French practitioners of FSL and they helped develop the language as we know it.

Cool huh?

In any case, the book I am primarily using for now is the second edition of A Basic Course in American Sign Language. I like it because it has some decent illustrations, but mainly because it also provides exercises I can use to help myself learn.

Going off of “Lesson 1,” I went over basic sentence structure and pronouns (including I, you, he, we, etc.). I then started to learn some of the vocabulary words they offer at the end of the section. They gave three or four pages worth, but I only went over the first (otherwise my head would have exploded). They’re a little harder to remember because I don’t have a catchy song to learn them too, and also because they don’t necessarily have any relationship to one another. They are great building blocks though.

How about that? My second week of learning a new language and I can already form a few basic sentences! I suppose that’s actually to be expected, but I’m excited about it nonetheless!