Fingerspelling - You Learned the ASL Alphabet Wrong!

We begin our fingerspelling journey with fist shapes.

You may ask, "What's a fist shape?" And, "I learned the alphabet like this A, B, C, D..., Why don't we do it in that order?"

Hence my title, You Learned the ASL Alphabet Wrong!

We learn starting with the toughest handshapes to read. This gives you good exposure and good practice to moving your fingers in new and different ways.

So many students learn how to fingerspell the ABC's and their name and that's all.

We'll go beyond that and learn multiple and random combinations that challenge you to develop your skills way beyond just spelling YOUR name.

This is where the rubber meets the road.

In the previous lesson we learned HOW to sign the fist shape letters.

Now, we will practice and drill them.

DO NOT SKIP THIS LESSON!

Great athletes and musicians don't become great without putting a lot of work into excelling at their craft.

Think of learning a language as a new craft. You need to put in some time practicing and developing your new craft. And ASL is a physical language. That means you need to develop the MUSCEL MEMORY to sign the letters (and later, the signs) quickly and effortlessly... and that takes practice.

I've designed this practice to be as interactive as a video lesson can be. When I recommend you pause and practice, do it. I promise as you follow my prompts and put in the work, the subsequent lessons get easier.

All the lessons build upon the previous lessons. I suppose you not only went through the lessons, but followed my advice and practice how I suggested before you moved on.

Let's go!

Now that you mastered fist shapes, we are going to move on to UP shapes/letters.

With fist shapes we learned 4 out of the 5 vowels. With the Up letters, we are going to learn most of the consonants and you will be able to spell many new words.

Up letters are some of the easiest to identify because they stick straight up and the have unique shapes that are easier to distinguish than the fist shape.

Now that you mastered fist shapes and up letters, we are going to move on to down and horizontal shapes/letters.

With fist shapes and up letters we learned most of the alphabet.

Down and horizontal letters are also easy to identify because they stick straight down and the have unique shapes as the up letters did.

After this lesson, you will know 24 of the 26 letters.

And after the practice session, you should start feeling more confident in your production and reading of many of the letters we've learned.

Now that you mastered fist shapes, up letters, and down letters we are going to move on to moving letters.

These are the final two letters we need to learn.

J and Z are the easiest to identity because they are the only letters that move and their movement is easy to spot.

The challenge with these letters is not in reading them but in producing them clearly and smoothly.

All these fingerspelling lessons were created in a specific order. This lesson is last on purpose. You must be familiar with all the letters of the alphabet prior to starting this lesson.

In this lesson, I suppose you have been doing the practice as I suggested.

We start picking up the pace in this lesson because you have practiced so much that I don't need to go as slow as when we started. If it's too fast, you should go pack through previous lessons until you feel comfortable moving forward.

A note about double letters: I cover this in the video but let me state it here. Many individuals have an accent and this relates to how they fingerspell too. I show the formal and proper way to double certain letters but I also discuss the variations for you to be aware of when you start having conversations with Deaf people.

Just as many Americans speak differently, many Deaf people sign differently too.

It's not about being "right."

It's about communication.