August – Sign with Alan
What’s the sign for …?
As I have mentioned in each monthly article so far; learning the alphabet is the best place to start learning sign language. Just being able to sign your name is a great start, followed by small words to get used to the hand shapes and fingerspelling. There is a fun game of fingerspelling to help with learning and receptive practice. The good thing about this game is, no words have more than 5 letters and you can alter the speed as to what you can manage. Please see the link below:
https://www.signlanguageforum.com/fschallengeios/?t=Mnx8fHxic2w=&leftright=
Many words such as Father, Mother, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and hundreds more use just the first letter as their sign, repeated, depending on how many syllables in the word; for example, Monday, would be M.M.
This now leads onto this month’s signs. You, sign and how. Early on when I learned sign language, this is something used many times. In particular when communicating with a sign language user. You might want to know a sign for something? For example, the colour green. The method used to ask would be: you sign G-R-E-E-N (green finger-spelled) how? And the person would reply with the sign.
This method can be helpful in many places such as a workplace, where there may be a person that communicates in sign language. Even for those of us that hear, gestures and made-up signs are used to communicate, like when we are in noisy environments or maybe we want to keep things private.
Please see below the link to the alphabet. There are lots of videos relating to it on you tube. This video I feel is one of the best:
Also, please also see the attached video for this month’s signs: you/me, sign and how.
Have fun. See you soon.
God bless.
The next Day of Healing is on the 23rd of September at Crosby Library 10-2pm. I will be there to sign, teach and help any that may have questions. I am qualified up to British Sign Language Level 3. I aspire in the near future to be a fully qualified interpreter. So, if your preferred method of communication is BSL, SSE, Makaton, I will do my best to help with any service you wish to access. All help given on the day is free of charge. Pop in for a cuppa and piece of cake. Everything discussed is in complete confidence.
Alan.
Crosby Library: https://www.seftondirectory.com/kb5/sefton/directory/service.page?id=HI-wM9yYCC8