This post will continue to be my learning from Michael with the ILU sign as a logo… the one who laughs like Blippi.

It’s unfortunate that I am enjoying these videos because his laugh is just too much for me sometimes, and he and I both share that we think our own jokes are hilarious as this makes him giggle quite often… so I’m sat here trying to learn new signs and vocabulary while constantly being annoyed but also engaged at the same time. It is a strange place for learning to happen but it’s working…. somehow.

Anyway! The new things I have learned from these lessons were how to differentiate pronouns between personal and possessive.

What’s pretty cool is all pronouns in each column (personal and possessive) share the same hand sign. For personal pronouns (in the column on the left) you use your index finger and for the possessive column (on the right) you use a flat palm (like if you were to tell someone to stop). For “I” you would use your index finger to point at yourself and for “MY” you would press your palm against your chest.

 

 

Another thing I learned during these lessons was family member signs. They all are based around your face if you’re talking about a cousin you make the “C” shape with your hand and put in near your cheek, kind of outlining your ear but if you are talking about a girl cousin, you lower it to your chin and if a male cousin, you raise it up around your forehead. This rule goes for all of your family members. I thought this was really interesting! It’s odd how things seem like common sense almost, if you had completely different signs for every word, there would be a lot to remember! But knowing that if you’re talking about someone and can just use a location of where the sign is to differentiate between male and female… just makes it so much simpler!!

I am really excited to continue this journey and keep learning all these insanely cool things about ASL!

He adds some dialogue sentences into the learning blocks and those have been a lot of fun! He leaves some dead air time between saying what the phrases will be before he starts showing you, to allow you time to try to figure it out for yourself and getting them right is an amazing feeling!! Definitely feels like I could go out into the world and interpret some ASL like a champ… I know I couldn’t just yet! But he definitely helps to build confidence!!

Have you watched ‘Switched at Birth’ before? Its a great series about two girls who were switched at birth and one is a Deaf ASL speaker and when watching that show you definitely feel like you can sign like a champ… or at least I did! haha. Since starting this learning project… it is very apparent that I definitely learned a very small amount, if anything, from that show!! But it was a great watch.. if you’ve seen in, what are your thoughts?