As well-intentioned as your motives may be, these methods may unintentionally make you harder to understand. That’s because not all deaf and hard-of-hearing people know sign language. In fact, of the 48 million people in the United States with hearing loss, less than 500,000 — or about 1% — use sign language.

Pidgin Signed English (PSE) or Signed English PSE is the most commonly used sign language in the United States among deaf individuals. The vocabulary is drawn from ASL, however it follows English word order. Filler and connecting words (to, the) as well as word endings (ed,ing) are often times dropped.

American Sign Language is used as a primary means of communication by many Deaf people in the United States and Canada, as well as by many hard-of-hearing and hearing individuals, especially the children of Deaf adults.

It is the knowledge of the word order, the situation, and the topic of conversation. These three things allow one to anticipate what will be fingerspelled.

Fingerspelling is a manual encoding of written language, used by signers to fill lexical gaps in a signed language (Sutton-Spence and Woll, 1999). British signers use a two-handed variety of fingerspelling in which 26 hand arrangements correspond to the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet (see Fig. 1).

Hearing people invented fingerspelling to bring English to deaf people, whereas sign language emerged out of necessity in the community. Fingerspelling therefore enjoyed a higher reputation, was considered more genteel and was used in education.

For left handed signers (left dominant), fingerspelling should be done in the area to the left of center. It should be out away from the body about 6-8 inches (not too far and not too close) and your letters should not be “thrown forward” or bounced up and down within that area.

What two things should you do when reading fingerspelling? It should look clear confident and quick. Vital that it is clear. * Indicate places, names, or ideas for which there is no official sign.

You start with your hands in a fist, with the index fingers and thumbs extended, like forming the ‘L’ sign horizontally, as if to shoot a gun from both hands. Then pull both hands back toward your torso with your index fingers curling inward at the same time (almost like forming the ‘X’ sign in ASL).

Work

1. Introduction.
2. Watch Yourself and Others Sign.
3. Discover Multiple Signs for Communicating One Thing.
4. Practice Your Signing — with Others.
5. Always Fingerspell a Name First.
6. Adjust Your Eyes; Everyone’s Signing Is Different.
7. Use Facial Expressions like Vocal Inflections.
8. Journal Your Progress.

It Looks Great on a Résumé If you sign up to help clean campus on Earth Day, chances are it’ll be typed up in your “look at all of the great work I can do” section. All of you go-getters should feel great about doing these things, but when a company sees that you know ASL, they’re more impressed.

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