Signing for Dummies.

[etsschu]

Ok, I'm trying to understand Grammar when signing. I understand that words like "the, am, are, is" are usually omitted, but what about the word order? In the book "Signing for Dummies" the word order is different, for example:

English: Do you sign?
Sign: SIGN YOU

English: Yes, are you deaf?
Sign: YES ---- DEAF YOU

I'm just a little bit confused on word orders. Wouldn't it just make more sense to use the same word order as English?

(I'm just learning so I might be asking some stupid questions, but asking questions is how I learn.)

 

[ismi]

PSE - Pidgin Signed English - is like that. I think now it's sometimes called contact signing, but I've never heard that except in conversations where people say, "oh, it's not PSE now, it's contact signing".

The thing to remember is that ASL is not English, nor is it really based on English all that much. It could be argued that it's a creole, but even that is debateable.

I'm also learning to sign, and ASL grammar confuses me, too. I'm working on it ... but I've found that a lot of the Deaf people I sign with use PSE. This is both a good thing (because I can communicate with them more easily) and a bad thing (because it means I don't get exposed to pure ASL as much). I'm not sure to what extent it's because these individuals are accomodating me versus signing PSE because that's what they prefer. I know it's a combination, I'm just not sure how much of each.

 

[Interpretrator]

The thing to remember is that ASL is not English, nor is it really based on English all that much. It could be argued that it's a creole, but even that is debateable.

It is recognized as a language of its own. It's derived from a combination of 19th-century French sign language as well as signs used in the United States around the same time period, and has also been influenced by spoken English.