How I can become better at ASL

Exactly... Forget about that book ! I strongly
believe and encourage them to learn ASL in person
at deaf socials/functions (much better than book).
 
Jordan said:
I am a hearie, I have been learning english since I could talk. Now, I am finding myself in this whole new language of ASL. I kinda understand the basis of the formation, its a lot like written Spanish(still no help there, couldnt make an A in high school if my life depended on it).

Can you all tell me some of the spoken as well as written rules for ASL?
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I wish I could! I'm in the same boat you're in.

Not sure what similarities with Spanish you see--maybe the adjective after the noun thing? OTOH, there's also the general -> specific pattern that I've read about, which would seem to conflict with the other. (There are more blue things than any specific blue thing I might be trying to talk about.)

The instructor in one class really tried very hard to dissuade us from making analogies to spoken languages. I couldn't help doing it anyway--people are analogy-making creatures! He'd describe topic-comment sentence structure, and I'd think "Oh, you mean like Japanese and the wa particle!" (On Karen Nakamura's web site, she alludes to similarities between Japanese and ASL, and I tend to think that's at least one of the similarities.)

If you run into a collection of rules of the sort you want, please do post about it. I'd like to have one, too! I can trundle over to a book store and find whole shelves of books that at least claim to describe English grammar, or Spanish grammar, or Latin grammar, and so on. Hasn't someone done the same for ASL?
 
jejones3141 said:
I can trundle over to a book store and find whole shelves of books that at least claim to describe English grammar, or Spanish grammar, or Latin grammar, and so on. Hasn't someone done the same for ASL?
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Of course there are books about ASL grammar. The best one is not "The Joy of Signing," which is just an outdated vocabulary list, but "American Sign Language" by Charlotte Baker Shenk and Dennis Cokely, otherwise known as "The Green Book."

However, having all the grammar of ASL at your fingertips (so to speak) isn't going to make you a better signer, any more than reading an English grammar book will make you speak more like a native English speaker. This book was my textbook for ASL 4 but more often than not it helped me understand WHY I was signing things the way I already had been, rather than teaching me something new. The key is to use the language with native signers or people who are extremely fluent.
 
Interpretrator said:
Of course there are books about ASL grammar. The best one is not "The Joy of Signing," which is just an outdated vocabulary list, but "American Sign Language" by Charlotte Baker Shenk and Dennis Cokely, otherwise known as "The Green Book."

However, having all the grammar of ASL at your fingertips (so to speak) isn't going to make you a better signer, any more than reading an English grammar book will make you speak more like a native English speaker. This book was my textbook for ASL 4 but more often than not it helped me understand WHY I was signing things the way I already had been, rather than teaching me something new. The key is to use the language with native signers or people who are extremely fluent.
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Ah, yes, I remember The Green Books. The books pull it all together into a systematic format, which is handy (oops, excuse the pun). You are right, they are good textbooks but they don't substitute for real-life exposure to signing.
 
jejones3141 said:
I wish I could! I'm in the same boat you're in.

Not sure what similarities with Spanish you see--maybe the adjective after the noun thing? OTOH, there's also the general -> specific pattern that I've read about, which would seem to conflict with the other. (There are more blue things than any specific blue thing I might be trying to talk about.)

The instructor in one class really tried very hard to dissuade us from making analogies to spoken languages. I couldn't help doing it anyway--people are analogy-making creatures! He'd describe topic-comment sentence structure, and I'd think "Oh, you mean like Japanese and the wa particle!" (On Karen Nakamura's web site, she alludes to similarities between Japanese and ASL, and I tend to think that's at least one of the similarities.)

If you run into a collection of rules of the sort you want, please do post about it. I'd like to have one, too! I can trundle over to a book store and find whole shelves of books that at least claim to describe English grammar, or Spanish grammar, or Latin grammar, and so on. Hasn't someone done the same for ASL?
Click to expand...

There is no written version of ASL. Although signwriting is coming along nicely, it does not use the same characters we use in English.
Secondly, for the intellectual types there is a book out,
Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language
By Scott Lidell (sp/)
ASL has some similarities to Spanish, it is closer to Spanish than English, but there are so many factors that can't be considered with spoken vs. signed language.
I wish everyone luck in learning ASL, keep it up, it is a wonderful full language!
(Most hearing ppl don't even know that it is a language, so the fact a hearing person asked this question shows some progress.)
 
You can become better in ASL by praciting.

Hi Jordan,
The best way to get better at ASL is practice.
Get together with some students in your class,and find out where the deaf hang out in your area.
Thats the best way to get better.
It takes time, but you'll get it.
Margie
Dir. of Communication Services
OCDAC
Interprerter.
I've know ASL now 30 yrs.
Good luck!
 
Levonian said:
Well, first of all, ditch the redundant pronoun reduplication. You’ll never see it in real life, at least not here on the west coast. How the fuck it got into the textbooks in the first place is beyond me. You must be using the ABC book, right?
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Believe it or not, but I actually know a group of deaf persons who use the redundant pronoun in certain situations.
 
I also see it from time to time used by Deaf people, here on the West Coast.
 
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