How do you sign...

will do - thank you!
 
Hello all, I am a new ASL student and I have been studying diligently for months now. I am still having some trouble with ASL sentence structure and I am having trouble avoiding some Signed English words.

How would you say/gloss "Be nice to me". I know the signs for nice and please but would I use the sign "do" for these phrases? Should "Be nice to me" be "YOU BEHAVE NICE ME"? Should I use the sign for "to"?

What about or "please do it"? Would it be "PLEASE DO point" ?

Thank you for your help!

I am trying to learn sign language so that one day I can volunteer in the community and make friends in the Deaf community. Thanks
 
sc24evr said:
Hello all, I am a new ASL student and I have been studying diligently for months now. I am still having some trouble with ASL sentence structure and I am having trouble avoiding some Signed English words.

How would you say/gloss "Be nice to me". I know the signs for nice and please but would I use the sign "do" for these phrases? Should "Be nice to me" be "YOU BEHAVE NICE ME"? Should I use the sign for "to"?

What about or "please do it"? Would it be "PLEASE DO point" ?

Thank you for your help!

I am trying to learn sign language so that one day I can volunteer in the community and make friends in the Deaf community. Thanks
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I'm wondering why you need to ask someone to be nice to you. Are deaf people picking on you? :confused:

Have you asked your instructor about this?

I would never ask anyone to "please do it." There's no telling what could happen!
 
Reba said:
I'm wondering why you need to ask someone to be nice to you. Are deaf people picking on you? :confused:

Have you asked your instructor about this?

I would never ask anyone to "please do it." There's no telling what could happen!
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lol ya some context might help. I am learning online through the paid lifeprint.com version. So far I haven't any real interactions with deaf people. I am still trying to find a community near Atlanta. So I have just been jumping around webchats. I have been practicing by just thinking of sentences and seeing if I would be able to structure it grammatically . I was imagining a situation where I would say "would you mind picking up the trash" then my wife would say "no!" lol in which I might reply "please do it". Trying to figure out if the syntax would be to restate the specific action or whether there is a short form.
 
Reba said:
I'm wondering why you need to ask someone to be nice to you. Are deaf people picking on you? :confused:

Have you asked your instructor about this?

I would never ask anyone to "please do it." There's no telling what could happen!
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:lol:
 
Reba said:
You can see INSPECT on aslpro or signing savvy, and then add the AGENT.
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Thanks - I looked earlier and couldn't find it. Must have typed or clicked something wrong.
 
Could anyone recommend a good translation for the following two lines?

Girl you really got me bad
I'm gonna get you back
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It's for a sign song my girlfriend is doing.

Thank you very much! :)
 
I'm thinking about the sign for "except" and "especially" - same sign (as far as I can tell) but opposite meanings. So I'd like to know how to be clear:

If I want to say "Everyone here is very tired, except Joe"

And don't want people to think I'm saying "Everyone here is very tired, especially Joe"

How do I avoid misunderstanding?

Thanks!
 
Thanks Journey,

Is there any situation where you would use the sign (grabbing the tip of the "1" finger and pulling it upward) for except? If you would, how to you keep it clear that you don't mean "especially"?
 
The only times I have seen it used as 'except' is with the accompanying/matching mouth shape ... and even then, in my experience, very rarely. However, that is only my experience. I trust others will chime in with their knowledge/experience and help you out :).
 
Can anybody tell me what a sign is from a description? It's like the sign for "STAR", but with palms facing yourself and "I" handshapes.
 
BLeGal2 said:
Hey!

SO I have a question: one of the chimpanzees I work with is named Loulis, his name sign is an "L" held on the nose once by the thumb of the "L". Supposedly there is another sign with the same handshape in the same area, but with a tapping or the forefinger bouncing a bit. Any idea what sign that could be? The rumor is that it is an inappropriate sign. Any idea?

what u described of "L" letter tapping on nose as lousy...but its tapping "L" on nose & then swings off nose and there the sign of lousy.
Thanks!
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Posted from Alldeaf.com App for Android
 
This is more of a dialect question then a how to question, but I hope it's ok to put it in this thread. I'm just starting out learning ASL, and I've seen three different or slightly different signs for How and Why. I'm assuming that the differences are a dialect thing. My question is, how do I find out which one is correct for my local dialect, and how big of an issue would it be to learn a sign in one dialect and find out it's signed differently locally? I'm working on finding a local meeting or college group or something to practice with, but I'd like to at least know some basics before I show up completely clueless. But at the same time, it won't do me any good to learn signs in a dialect that the local community wouldn't recognize.
 
jfinner1 said:
This is more of a dialect question then a how to question, but I hope it's ok to put it in this thread. I'm just starting out learning ASL, and I've seen three different or slightly different signs for How and Why. I'm assuming that the differences are a dialect thing. My question is, how do I find out which one is correct for my local dialect, and how big of an issue would it be to learn a sign in one dialect and find out it's signed differently locally? I'm working on finding a local meeting or college group or something to practice with, but I'd like to at least know some basics before I show up completely clueless. But at the same time, it won't do me any good to learn signs in a dialect that the local community wouldn't recognize.
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Go out to your community. If sign not recognized you will asked to fingerspell it, and someone will show you correctly.
 
jfinner1 said:
This is more of a dialect question then a how to question, but I hope it's ok to put it in this thread. I'm just starting out learning ASL, and I've seen three different or slightly different signs for How and Why. I'm assuming that the differences are a dialect thing. My question is, how do I find out which one is correct for my local dialect, and how big of an issue would it be to learn a sign in one dialect and find out it's signed differently locally? I'm working on finding a local meeting or college group or something to practice with, but I'd like to at least know some basics before I show up completely clueless. But at the same time, it won't do me any good to learn signs in a dialect that the local community wouldn't recognize.
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First, the general guidelines:

Ask your instructor.

Ask a member of the local deaf community.

Use any version of the sign in question and note reactions of the deaf people present. If someone doesn't understand the sign, the person will ask what it means, and usually show the version that that person uses.

Second, about HOW and WHY:

Since you didn't give descriptions, I'm going to guess that what you see as dialect differences aren't really the case for those signs. It would depend on the context of their use. It could also be the variance of production, such as the difference between the textbook version and the real-life chat version. Also, do you mean WHY or do you mean FOR-FOR? Another point is that HOW can be incorporated with other signs, such as HOW-MUCH, which is not the same as HOW+MUCH or understood by non-manual markers but not signed, as in HOW-OLD, which is not HOW+OLD.

Finally, under what circumstances did you see these HOW and WHY sign differences? Youtube? Real life? That's also a factor.
 
Wow, awesome responses, thanks. I don't currently have an instructor, as I can't afford a tutor or college, and I haven't found any community classes in my area. And I'm not sure how to get involved in the local deaf community, so I don't have anyone to ask there. I'm working on that one, lol. I'm not very good at being descriptive, so I'm not exactly sure how to describe the signs I've seen, but I'll give it a shot for "why", since that was the one with more obvious differences. 1) Started with dominant hand flat, fingers together, up by the side of your head. Ring and Middle fingers fold down, while whole hand moves down. Hand kinda end up looking like the "rock on" hand, if that makes sense. 2) Starts pretty much the same a 1, but fingers are loose. Only movement is the middle finger kind of tapping toward the head. 3) Starts with the hand by the forehead almost like the sign for "boy". Hand moves away from the head, and fingers form the letter "y", with the palm facing in.

Those are three of the ones I've seen. To be honest, you lost me when you started talking about FOR-FOR, HOW-MUCH, HOW+MUCH, etc. I don't think I've learned any of that yet, lol.

As for where I saw them, I've been going though StartASL and ASL University online, and also looking at SigningSavvy for some extra vocabulary. I also have two iPhone apps, but those haven't been as helpful. And I've been watching Switched at Birth, and some YouTube videos, and videos off of DeafTV.
 
I love that Maroon 5 song :)

Sometimes, I find myself signing along to songs for fun. Maybe she can interpret it as, "Girl, wow, I'm really addicted to you. I will win you back again." Just keep syntax in mind.
 
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