- Welcome back to my channel,
the best place for new signers, intermediate signers
and struggling signers.
I am so excited for today's video.
We are going to be talking about
one of my absolute favorite ASL dictionaries.
Now I've talked about ASL dictionaries before.
There are ASL dictionaries
that are just totally completely (blows raspberry) lame-age.
And my absolute favorite ASL dictionary
I talk about in this video,
I talk about both a lame dictionary to avoid
and a really good one, and then I have another video
I talked about ASL gifts that you can get
and there I talked about the other dictionaries that I love
in there as well.
But today, I'm gonna go over my favorite,
one of my favorite ones, this one,
and why you need this in your arsenal.
"The American Sign Language Handshape Dictionary".
Now, if you've ever learned a form of language
outside of ASL,
you've heard of the reverse look up dictionary.
So if you hear somebody say, "Auf wiedersehen",
you would look it up in your reverse look up dictionary
and go, "Oh, that's what that means".
Don't ask me what it means.
Hello in German?
Don't judge me.
Love you Germany.
I went there, love you.
Anyway, (Rochelle laughs)
so that's kind of the concept here for you.
So remember in the last video,
I talked about the five parameters
and how important they are to be able to sign accurately,
and in a video before that, I talked about how important
it is to get your receptive learning.
All of those skills are really gonna help you,
and this dictionary's gonna help you with both of those.
It's gonna help you to learn new signs.
It talks about the five parameters
in each of the descriptions.
I'm gonna go over it extensively, you'll see.
And so that's gonna help you both sign accurately
and be able to understand people.
So this is just mm.
Okay, let's talk about why this dictionary is so awesome
and how to use it, and then I'll go over
a couple of cons with you about it, all right?
All right, let's go.
So I'm just gonna say ASL instead of American Sign Language.
It's just a mouthful.
"The ASL Handshape Dictionary" is not organized
like a typical dictionary.
It's not going to be alphabetical.
It's gonna assume you don't know what the sign is,
so how would you be able to look it up with a word
if you don't know what the sign means, right?
So we don't have time for alphabetical.
It'd be a waste of our time.
It instead is organized by hand shape.
It's organized first by one handed hand shapes,
so a sign that only uses one hand,
and then two handed hand shapes,
a sign that uses both of your hands, okay?
So that is how you navigate through it, all right?
First off.
It's also organized so when you look
at the two handed signs, the sign that it shows you,
because you know, some signs can have two different
hand shapes, so which hand shape should it be?
So you wanna look at the hand that's your dominant hand
that's doing the main part of a sign,
and that is gonna be the main hand shape
that you wanna look up.
So if it's the one hand shape,
but it also uses the flat B hand shape,
you're gonna wanna look at the one hand shape.
Now if you're seeing a sign and you're not sure
which hand is the dominant hand
and which is the non-dominant hand,
you'll wanna make a note of both of the hand shapes
and then you'll just look up both hand shapes
and then you'll find it.
So how do you use this dictionary?
Well, this is what's awesome.
So if you're watching a video
or you're seeing somebody sign something
and they sign a sign and you're like,
"I don't know what that means",
you're gonna wanna stop if it's a video,
or if it's in person, you'll wanna make a note mentally
and then write it down as soon as you can.
But you wanna write down
as many parameters as you can, okay?
So you wanna go, "Okay, what's the hand shape?
"Where was it located?
"What was the movement?
"Where was the palms facing?
"What was the face doing?"
Write all of it down.
The most important part you wanna look at
is the hand shapes first, and then location and movement
and all that kind of stuff, all right?
But if you don't know the hand shapes,
you won't be able to look it up.
So the most important is the hand shapes
and make a note, is it one handed and two handed?
As much information as you can write down about the sign
as you can, the more helpful, okay?
Then next, you're gonna crack open your book.
You say, "Okay, it was a one handed sign."
All right, one handed sign, so we're only gonna look
at the first part of the dictionary.
We're not gonna look at the two handed signs.
And it was using the bent B hand shape, so you're like,
"Okay, bent B hand shape."
So you're gonna turn to the bent B area.
So we got open B, now we've got bent B.
And we go, "Okay, where was it located?
"Well it was on the cheek."
Okay, it was on the cheek,
so we're gonna scan through the pictures.
We go, "Well here's one that's on the cheek.
"Well, I don't think that, this one started on the cheek
"and that one ends on the cheek,
"but this one started on the cheek.
"Okay, not on the cheek, not on the cheek,
"kinda close to the cheek but not touching the cheek.
"Okay, that's not on the cheek.
"That one ends on the cheek but it didn't start,
"but the sign that I saw didn't start there.
"This one's on the neck."
And then we go, "Oh, this one is right there on the cheek.
"That's exactly what, that looks on the cheek.
"No, no."
And then we go, "Okay, these are C signs"
so we're done here.
So this one looks the most like it is.
So I'm like, "Okay, let's check the movement", all right?
Check the movement, check the palm orientation, and I go,
"Oh, it is this sign!"
And this sign is ashamed, bashful, shame or shy.
So I'm like, "Perfect, now I know this sign"
and now you're gonna practice it.
You're gonna go, "Okay, shy, shy, ashamed, ashamed,
"bashful, I got it."
Okay, now you know the sign.
Now you're gonna add it to your practice routine
that you have, so you can review and practice this sign.
But that's how you're gonna go through the dictionary
to identify the sign that you're looking for.
This dictionary is really nice because it helps you
to become a more independent learner.
You have the ability to check and learn signs on your own
without having to find somebody that has expertise
that can help you, or that has the time,
or is going to respond to you, all right?
It's also gonna help you become more accurate
because you're gonna be able to recognize people's signs,
you're gonna be able to break those parts up in a sign.
Remember we talked about that in the last video
and you can check that up in the cards here
or down in the description box below.
You can check that out after you've finished watching this.
So it's really gonna help you become a more accurate signer
and better able to understand somebody receptively,
because if you're spending that much time
recognizing a sign, identifying it,
the more likely it is that you're gonna recognize it
and understand it and remember it, okay?
And also, I love being an independent learner,
so that's always a bonus.
Okay, so that's also really good.
You can also learn and use this as just a dictionary.
You can go, "Okay, I wanna learn 10 signs
"with the bent B hand shape, two handed signs."
So you can just go through and you can practice, go,
"Oh, I know that sign", practice it and check it.
What's really nice,
remember how I talked about the five parameters?
Each of these has the five parameters, which is really nice.
So you can also use this to check your own signing,
"Am I signing this correctly?"
They do have an index in the back that's alphabetical,
so if there is a sign that you know that you wanna check on,
you can go, "Oh, I know room.
"Let me check room", all right?
And then you can flip to that page
and look at the parameters, and that can also help you
fill out those cards that I told you about
in the other video, in the last video, okay?
So it's really important to know all these parameters
in the dictionary.
So it's awesome, because these pictures aren't always
the easiest to understand, so it's super important
that you check out these parameters that will help you
know exactly how to move to match the picture,
rather than just relying only on the picture.
Now the only drawback to this dictionary is,
while it has a ton of signs in it,
it doesn't have every sign or near enough every sign.
I wish they had a volume two of this with even more signs,
because I've done some where I'm looking up signs
to help prepare practice activities for my ASL students
and I go, "Oh my gosh, that sign's not in there."
So I have to come up with something else
for them to do instead or pick a different sign.
So I wish that it had more signs.
So that's really the only drawback I can think of for this,
is that it doesn't have all of the signs.
But honestly, I don't know how many it has.
I'd have to look it up.
So it has almost 2000 signs.
That's a lot of signs!
It just doesn't have every sign, right?
Not any dictionary has every sign,
but there are, there have been some instances of signs
that I was looking for to create practice activities
for my ASL students and they didn't have the sign
that I wanted them to have in here,
so I was kinda bummed about that.
But I honestly, I think every ASL student
needs this dictionary.
Get the other two dictionaries,
"The ASL Children's Gallaudet Dictionary",
then the other ASL Gallaudet dictionary, and this one.
If you only have the budget for two,
get the ASL Children's one.
Then save your pennies, get this one
and then get the other Gallaudet one.
This one is gonna help you so much,
especially as you're learning to understand other people.
So I have a link down below on where you can get that,
so you can find that as well, so you can purchase it
and add it to your resource section in your home.
I know your home is now becoming
the beautiful ASL space for you.
Be sure to hit the notification bell,
because in the next video,
I'm gonna be talking about your role as an ASL student
in entering and building connections in the deaf community,
how to make connections in the deaf community,
so definitely check that out.
If you're wanting to learn some more ASL vocabulary,
check out these two videos, but don't forget to get
this beautiful book.
You'll thank me later.