Discovering And Learning American Sign Language

American Sign Language is the primary language used by American deaf people to communicate. It is based on hand movements and other bodily gestures (specific movements and shapes of the hand and arms, eyes, face, head and body posture). It is just as rich and complex - with the capacity to convey the wide range of thoughts, feelings, intentions and nuances - as spoken languages.

The first thing to note is that American Sign Language is widely used throughout North America. Ask most people what they think the fourth most commonly used language in the United States is, and they'll probably be surprised to find that it's actually ASL. Meanwhile, ASL differs quite a bit from the first most commonly used language in America... English!

American Sign Language involves communication via facial, body and hand gesticulation. "Signers" also use nearby space to indicate far-away people or places.

People from foreign countries wishing to learn American Sign Language should not expect ASL to be similar to the sign language expressed in their own country. Notably, people who come from other English speaking places have no particular advantage when it comes to learning ASL. ASL, is, for instance, quite different from the sign language used in countries like Britain and Australia. In fact, American Sign Language shares many vocabulary terms with Old French Sign Language (LSF). This is because a French deaf man, Laurent Clerc, was one of the first teachers of the deaf in the United States back in the nineteenth century.

Like most sign languages, American Sign Language is like any oral languages in that it organizes "phonemes" - elementary, meaningless units - into meaningful semantic units. The elements of a sign are represented by the acronym HOLME. HOLME stands for hand shape (or hand form), orientation (or palm orientation), location (or place of articulation), movement, and non-manual markers (or facial expression). Unlike oral languages, where there is just one serial stream of phonemes, multiple ideas may be communicated by a signer at the same time.

To acquire proficiency in ASL, a learner needs to devote plenty of time to developing their signing skills - at least two years of education and training, according to the United States based National Deaf Association.

There are a number of approaches you can take to acquire signing skills. These vary from enrolling in programs offered by local colleges and schools for deaf students, to web based programs, to home study DVD courses, to picture books. Nevertheless, practicing with other signers is definitely the best way to get up to speed as fast as possible.

Depending on your goals, it's not essential to become an eloquent American Sign Language user. If your main aim is merely to adequately communicate with signers, learning the major gestures and movements, the alphabet, and numbers may be sufficient.