No, it’s not my birthday! In fact, it was a family friend’s birthday this weekend! This particular family friend is deaf, so what better way to practice my ASL this week than by learning Happy Birthday!
ASL on YouTube
This week I wanted to do something different. Every week I download an ASL teaching app and it gives me the same things; dictionaries, lesson sets, videos of interpreters doing signs, etc. So, I decided to go back to the very start to where I got my inspiration for this learning project; YouTube! Everyone knows what YouTube is. With such a vast spread of resources and videos, I figured there must be some good ASL YouTubers for me to learn from. Well here’s my favourite!
ASL Love is a channel run by a woman named Dana. She came up with the idea to create a channel during quarantine and has so far posted 200 videos teaching different ASL signs and phrases. She went to university for pre-deaf studies and has a goal to create an online dictionary of signs by posting at least once a week.
At the start of my journey I came across her page and learned some of the alphabet and different phrases through her videos. She is excellent at demonstrating signs, giving different angles and talking about sign variation and how you determine your preferred way to do things. In her video on how to sign Happy Birthday in ASL, she demonstrates how to do each sign individually and then puts it together in song order.
I loved her video and found the way she demonstrates super easy to follow. The way she shows different angles and repeats the signs so you don’t have to rewind was great for learning. I don’t really have any cons to her videos. Of course, her signs are limited to what she’s posted, unlike the dictionaries in most apps where you’re able to search any words. However, I think she covers a lot of basics and more commonly used phrases. I’ve already looked through some of her videos and think that she is a great source to learn beginner ASL.
Signing Happy Birthday
Alright here we go! I decided to make a video reviewing Dana and then demonstrating the song I learned. NO I am not singing; it’s not my specialty! So appreciate me speaking happy birthday and doing the signs. I also decided to keep my family friend’s name confidential so I am singing it to a random name; Cody. Happy Birthday to any Cody’s out there!
Thanks for joining me this week guys!
This is awesome that you thought of your friend, and decided to learn Happy Birthday for this said friend, I bet the friend was super suprised and excited that you did this for them! Great work Carys!