Hey signers, did you know there are around 200,000 words in the English language, but only around
10,000 signs in ASL? Fingerspelling is a necessary part of ASL conversations.
Lucky for you we have dropped a new course all about fingerspelling and this video is going to
give you a sneak peek of one of those lessons. In our course, I guide you from start to finish.
Your first lessons are all about the alphabet and do's and don'ts. I break down tips and tricks and
even the common categories that are fingerspelled. We also have tons of quizzes and exercises
to practice what you just learned. This is all offered on Skillshare, the sponsor of today's
video. The first 1,000 people to use the link or my code will get a one month free trial of
Skillshare. Skillshare also offers thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious
people on various topics including fine arts, design, photography, crafts, and of course, sign
language. Now let's learn all about fingerspelling with some essential rules, tips, and tricks.
In this section I'm going to give you tons of tips and tricks, so are you ready? First,
we are going to be watching fingerspelling on the hand where I'm going to take the letter
and I'm going to fingerspell out words, but whenever you're watching that you don't need
to look at letter by letter. You need to be looking at the word itself and reading it
out. For instance, if I'm doing the sign cat you're not going to look at it and just say
C A T you're going to look at this and go cat. You need to read the word,
not the letter. Now let's look at double letters. For instance, if we have the word
doll, you're going to notice that I'm not doing much movement with my double letter. I do
D O L L. We're not gonna bounce it. We're not gonna go like this to show 'L L'. We're just going to
slightly move it over and you're not going to open and close it, because then it would look like
you're trying to make another letter you're just going to sign D O L L. That slight little movement.
When you're fingerspelling, you need to make sure that your hand is relaxed. For instance,
I see a lot of people do the letter 'E' like this and really stretch it out that's going to put a
lot of strain on your hand but if you relax it like this, it makes it easier to move your hand,
instead of stretching it out like that. That makes it really difficult so make sure you have relaxed
hands when you're fingerspelling, this will also help you avoid injury. Now what if I make a mistake.
This happens all the time. You don't have to make a big production of it and wipe away.
what you just fingerspelled and push it away.
All you need to do is fingerspell ...oop, I meant to do an 'A', wave just like that.
You don't have to make a huge production out of it. When you're fingerspelling
words like O'Malley or Trader Joe's that have that apostrophe in the word itself,
you're going to take that letter like the 'O' for O'Malley and you are going to twist it
and this is going to show that 'O' apostrophe and then you will continue fingerspelling the word.
Like Trader Joe's. What would you do? You would fingerspell Trader
Joe's just like that. It doesn't matter where the apostrophe is if it's before or after doing that
twist is going to show that there's an apostrophe attached to that letter. What if you have to
fingerspell more than one word? For instance, let's take the word Olive Garden. Well first you're going
to fingerspell 'Olive' and then make a pause and then 'Garden' and it will look just like this.
Sometimes you have words that are hyphenated and you're going to show that in the word itself. So,
how you do this is you're going to pull your index finger down and your thumb
touching to that index finger just like this. So for example, we have the word Smith hyphen
Brown and it will look just like this.
The same can be done with a period. You're just going to use that same hand shape
and put a dot just like this for your period. So, maybe you're going to be
giving an email address and your email is Natalie.Ivy and it would look like this.
What does it look like to fingerspell surnames? Well for Mr. and Mrs., you would do something like
this Mr. Mrs. Now this will only be used in formal situations. In day-to-day Deaf culture,
Deaf people don't really use surnames at all, they go by a first name basis. Here's another tip
don't make up signs, fingerspell. A lot of people think when they're starting to learn ASL that
they're going to learn a sign for every single word in English, but that simply isn't true. There
is fingerspelling in ASL and sometimes it's words that you think would have a sign but don't, so
that's why it's so incredibly important to learn how to fingerspell clearly and understand it.
For instance, when you're just beginning to learn sign language, you might ask what is the sign for
'ice'. that way the person can sign back to you, oh it's ice. Learning fingerspelling
from the very beginning is going to help you get to conversational sign language that much faster.
If someone is fingerspelling a word that you don't understand, then ask them to fingerspell
again. When they do this, you can copy sign it back which means if they're signing C A T like this you
watch them and sign it back at the same time or when they're finished fingerspelling it, you watch
it and then fingerspell it back to them, this way they can see if you're getting it and help you out.
My biggest tip is to get out there and sign with others, this is the best way to improve your skills.
Continue to practice fingerspelling often, this way you'll keep up your skills for whenever you
need them. In this next lesson, Im going to teach you when to use fingerspelling.
If you found this video helpful, be sure to like this video and subscribe to our channel
so you don't miss out on future videos like this one. Also, thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring
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click the link in the description and until next time keep learning how to sign 🤟🏼