ALAS… Animoto meets ASL
This week in my ASL learning journey I have focused on common phrases and colours.
When I first chose to focus on these 2 areas I though it would be really challenging to do but, if i’m being totally honest it turned out to be fairly simple and I was able to understand and practice them with little to no help… help meaning I never had to go back and rewatch the lessons in order to practice. I’m sure it goes without saying though that for the first day or so I would follow along with the lessons in order to give myself time to learn without just trying to memorize. So let’s get into it!
Colours
For the colour lessons I used Sign Language 101 Lesson 2 – ABC’s, Colors & Pronouns. I skipped to 6:22mins in the video because I had previously learned the alphabet and I stopped at 7:57mins in the video because I was not ready to learn numbers or pronouns just yet.
While learning the colours in sign I made up little things to help me remember both orange and yellow:
- Orange – The sign for orange is kind of like squeezing an orange in front of your nose so that is how I remembered
- Yellow – The sign for yellow is kind of like making a phone with your thumb and pinky. you then shake it close to your ear. So I remembered by thinking (phone ringing, you answer it and say Y-ello).
Common Phrases
For the common phrases I used 2 different resources. The first common phrase I wanted to learn was Hello, my name is Julie. For this I used Greetings in ASL, “Hi, my name is…” It was super helpful because the creator went over the greeting slowly and gave opportunity to practice alongside themselves. The second resource I used was one I have been using since starting this learning project. It’s called Take Lessons: 20+ Basic Sign Language Phrases for Beginners | ASL. I learned a lot this week including there is no sign for is and when you are asking a question, the question statement comes at the end of the sentence.
If you practice this at home let me know some other neat ways there are to remember colours and even the phrases!
You have my complete attention! Animoto! Awesome! I have not used this before but now I have to check it out! I love your learning project idea! I used baby sign language with my babies (1 choose not to speak until he was 5 although he was capable). Sign language was life-saving for us although I never became fluent. Thanks for your vulnerability with your use of videos! Keep up the great work!
Jana I am so happy to share this with you, Sign language is a great tool as a parent and teacher. Even without being fluent sign language still gives you the opportunity to communicate in the best possible way for yourself/others. Side note, thanks for noting my vulnerability. As you can probably tell i’m not 100% comfortable with videos and editing them is even worse. Thank god for Animoto, it really made the process simple, easy and fun! I hope you try it out sometime!