wRITING ASL KEY
Here are a few quick tips for explaining ASL as it is commonly written about.
For more on ASL structure see the dialect, grammar, and semantic change tabs below this one.
- # means "finger spelled". Finger spelling a word means to use the alphabet to express your word. This is commonly used for names of people, places, or words you don't know the sign for. If you learn the ASL alphabet, communication becomes infinitely more effective. An example of fingerspelling is all of the headers on this website (minus the sign for "I love you")
- Words in caps are simply a way of expressing direct signs in ASL.
- Loan signs are signs where a few of the letters in the word are finger spelled and others are glossed over.
- Classifiers are a whole subset of groups that different signs fit into depending on their
- Mouthings are when you don't voice, but you make the motions with your mouth like you are saying something. Mouthings are different in English and ASL for grammatical reasons (see grammatical tab below this tab)
For more on ASL structure see the dialect, grammar, and semantic change tabs below this one.