ASL, Week 3: Similes

As I entered into week 3 of learning sign language, I began to realize that I need to be more aggressive with my approach if I want to make serious headway in a year. For this reason, I’m going to attempt to start completing a new lesson plan each week from my ASL books.

As I’ve mentioned before, though, I want to give myself enough time to memorize each new word I learn. Naturally, I can’t simply rely on learning a word in one week and then expecting it to stay in my long-term memory. For this reason, I have been making it a point to go over all of the words I learned in the previous weeks every week.

You can imagine how long this list may end up becoming! For this reason, I’m trying to come up with a method of reviewing the words I learned without having to go back through all of them every week. I’ll let you know when I solidify that method.

Last Weeks Words

As for the words I learned last week, it was another hodgepodge. I’ve tried to figure out a way I can use them all in a sentence, and it just hasn’t worked. There’s just too many of them now!

In any case, I’ve hit a number of words this week that are either very similar to each other or the same word with multiple signs. Some of these signs have completely different meanings, and others don’t really. I figured I’d hit this territory eventually.

For example, last week I learned the sign for “Dumb/Stupid,” which is basically just slamming your fist against your head. This week, I learned the word for “Ignorant” or “Naive.” They are similar words, and can be used interchangeable sometimes, but they also mean slightly different things. The sign for “Ignorant” involves flicking up a peace sign (or the sign for the letter “V”) up to your head.

Similarly, I learned the sign for “Angry/Frustrated” last week. This week I learned “Mad/Grumpy.” Once again, they can be used interchangeably, but apparently the signs do convey slightly different emotions. “Angry” is generally used to mean “fed up” or “losing one’s temper,” whereas “Mad” is used to mean “upset” or “irritable.”

It’s going to be tough remembering these slight distinctions…