ASL

Facts on the Deaf Community

  • ASL is a relatively new language, which first appeared in the 1800s with the founding of the first successful American School for the Deaf by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet.
  • As of 2016, In North Carolina, about 2.2 percent of people, or about 130,600, have difficulty hearing and about 2,660 people with hearing disabilities survive on Social Security Disability benefits.
  • ASL is the third most commonly used language in the United States, after English and Spanish.
  • Contrary to popular belief, ASL is not representative of English nor is it some sort of imitation of spoken English that you and I use on a day-to-day basis. For many, it will come as a great surprise that ASL has more similarities to spoken Japanese and Navajo than to English.
  • There is no universal sign language.
  • ASL, because it’s visual, is a deeply conceptual language.

Grammar

Tenses Are Represented Differently in ASL

  • In English, verbs are changed to show their tense, using the suffixes -ed, -ing and -s.
  • In ASL, tenses are shown differently.
  • Rather than conjugating the verbs, tense is established with a separate sign.
  • To represent the present tense, no change is made to the signs.
  • However, to sign past tense, you sign “finish” at chest level either before or after you finish your sentence.
  • Signing the future tense is quite similar to signing past tense. It’s indicated with a sign either before or at the end of the sentence as well as by adding “will” at the end of the sentence.
  • One interesting difference in the future tense, however, is that how far away from your body you sign the word “will” indicates how far in the future the sentence is.

Examples

English: The boy throws a frisbee

ASL: Boy — frisbee — throw

I don’t really like fish.

FISH DON’T-LIKE I

The ‘really’ in the English sentence would be shown with your face and not by signing REAL.

I’m going to the library tomorrow

TOMORROW LIBRARY I GO

I’m going to the library tomorrow to get a new book.

TOMORROW LIBRARY I GO BOOK NEW BORROW

Common Misconceptions About ASL

Because of the word ‘American’ in its name, many assume it shares the same qualities as English and is simply a representation of English using hands and gestures.

Misconception #1: ASL Is “English On the Hands”

  • ASL actually has little in common with spoken English, nor is it some sort of signed representation of English words.
  • ASL was formed independently of English and has its own unique sentence structure and symbols for various words and ideas.
  • The key features of ASL are:

hand shape

palm orientation

hand movement

hand location

gestural features like facial expression and posture

Misconception #2: ASL Is Shorthand

  • Another common misconception about ASL is that it is some form of shorthand, or rapid communication by means of abbreviations and symbols. ASL is a complex language system with its own set of linguistic components.

Misconception #3: ASL Is Finger Spelling

  • In ASL, finger spelling is reserved for borrowing words from the English language for proper nouns and technical terms with no ASL equivalent.
  • For example, finger spelling can be used for people’s names, places, titles, and brands.