Understanding American Sign Language: Beyond the Basics

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ASL also called Ameslan, is most used in communication between the deaf as sign language, it has its own unique grammatical structure, and the English grammar is different. Some common schools in the United States will treat it as a foreign language. Deaf people in the use of American Sign Language follow their specific expression, so must not set of ASL grammar with the rules of English grammar.
1. The first, A correct understanding of American sign language.
We can't take ASL is pure as the fingers of the English word spelling. Refers to spelling letters to spell out the words one by one, with his fingers in ASL is used to spell, but it is mainly used in the case of no specific gestures, most ASL vocabulary is composed of gestures.
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If someone says \"tree\", we will immediately understand the meaning, this is because the concept of tree in people's minds. Gestures and so on. The words \"tree\" Sign language speaker gestures, look at those words don't need to think about the word \"tree\", you can understand right now. That is gesture to represent a concept or point of view, rather than a word, when use ASL express ideas, don't try to express the same meaning in English sentences in all words with gestures, language is not such operations, such as \"I'm hungry\" in English. Said in Spanish is \"I am a little hungry. Is ASL is ought to say \"I'm hungry\". In the application of sign language, the first to think good to express the thought in your mind, forget the word, and then find the right gestures to express it, even when you check sign language reference books, also not constrained by literal, should use similar words to find the right gestures.
Words and gestures of ASL is not a one-to-one. Some words can be used several ways to express, in addition to borrow (\" bird \"gestures commonly used is referred to as\" chicken little \"), ellipsis (such as \"How are you, Bob?\" to \"How you\"), composite (\" ocean \"sharing the four gestures, such as\" water, wave 1, 2, 3 waves \"wave), additional (e.g., add the gesture of\" AGENT \"lawyer said after the gesture of\" LAW \") and repetitive, such as repeated action said car steering wheel), abbreviations (such as expressed in SF, San Francisco)

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