People and The Body

This week I went over lesson 6 on SignLanguage101, “People, The Body & Clothes”. And although learning the signs for clothes can be useful, I found the signs of people to be the most useful part of this lesson. Learning signs like “man”, “woman”, “father”, “mother”, etc. It was good to know these signs, especially if you were talk to a relative using ASL. I have said in past blog posts that sometimes signs for words make sense with the action you do, where as some seem completely random. What I liked learning about the signs for different people is that the signs are the same for both masculine signs and feminine signs. The difference is the location of where you do the sign. For example, as seen down below, the sign for “father” and “mother” is the same. The difference is that the sign for “father”, is when your hand is open with your thumb against your forehead. But the sign for “mother” is your open hand with your thumb against your chin. As Dr. Bridges said in this lesson, masculine signs are above the eyes, and feminine signs are below the eyes, making it much easier to remember the signs, since you need to remember one for both masculine and feminine signs.

As well as signs for people, this lesson also went over signs for the body. Where as some signs are straightforward, like the sign for “teeth” is just pointing at your teeth. Or the sign for “nose” is touching your nose. Some were a little more complex. For example, the sign for “feet” is finger spelling F-E-E-T and then pointing at your feet. Not that this is too difficult but you need to just remember when there is a more complex sign for a particular body part.

Overall, I’ve had a lot of fun using this site to learn ASL over this semester, and I am excited to create my summary of learning and make a video to show what I have learned these last few months.