Signing For Dummies (2 page)

Introduction

American Sign Language is something we’ve all seen Deaf people use in restaurants, hospitals, airports, and the like. It’s fascinating to watch; to see people sharing ideas about every subject is remarkable. Now, you can have a chance to enter the wonderful world of Deaf people. This book is designed to act as an introduction for you to get your hands wet. It’s also a great refresher for the person who needs an easy and clear way to practice Sign.

About This Book

Signing For Dummies
is designed to give you a general understanding of the properties of Sign, as well as an understanding of Deaf culture. As you’ll soon see, the language and the culture go hand in hand, and an understanding of both makes you a better signer.

To clarify,
Signing For Dummies
focuses solely on what’s known as
American Sign Language
(ASL). ASL certainly isn’t the only form of Sign Language that’s used in the United States, but it is the most popular in the Deaf community, which is why we’ve chosen it over other Sign systems.

This book is categorized according to subject. You can use each chapter as a building block for the next chapter, or you can skip around wherever you please. Just find a subject that interests you and dig in, remembering that the most important thing is to have fun while you’re figuring out this stuff. When you feel that you understand a concept, practice with your friends. If they understand you, you’re probably on the right track. And if you don’t understand something, don’t despair. Talk to your Deaf friends or others who already know Sign.

Conventions Used in This Book

To help you navigate through this book, let us explain some conventions we’ve used when writing this book:

Glossing:
Whenever we use Sign in lists, examples, and dialogues, we print it in all caps to show that it’s the closest equivalent to its English counterpart.

Bolding:
When we are about to introduce a new sign, we bold it in the text, so that you know you’re about to learn a new Sign.

Capping of Sign and Deaf:
For the purposes of this book, we capitalize the word
Sign
as another name for the language and
Deaf
because it means culturally Deaf.

Dashes:
ASL doesn’t use punctuation, so we add dashes to show slight pauses in Sign translations.

The text (Sign and English translation) always comes before the illustration.

To save space, words that are fingerspelled and manual numbers do not have illustrations. You can refer to Chapter 1 or the Cheat Sheet if you need help remembering how to sign a particular letter or number.

“Sign” and “ASL” are used interchangeably.

Web sites appear in monofont.

Anytime you see a
Q
in a line of ASL, that indicates that you need to sign the manual question mark. Refer to Chapter 4 to find out more about the manual question mark.

This book also includes a few elements that other
For Dummies
books do not. Here are the new elements that you’ll find:

Signin’ the Sign dialogues:
Seeing Sign in actual context helps you understand how to use Sign vocabulary. Many signs have more than one meaning — this part can help out with that.