Fingerspelling

So it turns out that learning a visual language mostly on your own is a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. I've been practicing fingerspelling a lot lately, spelling words when I'm listening to music or just walking around my house. I thought I was getting pretty good at it.

A few days ago I went to work and asked one of my coworkers, who knows ASL, to spell something for me. And as soon as she started moving her fingers, I was lost. Oops. As it turns out, signing things on your own and watching someone else sign? Two completely different things.

So I'm going to keep practicing. What I'd really love to do is take an ASL class, but the community college classes already started about a month ago. Guess I'll have to wait until the next semester starts, but in the meantime, I'll just keep trying to learn as much vocabulary and grammar as I can on my own.

Here we go again.

I'm sorry to say that this blog has been not much more than a placeholder for awhile. I'm sorry, blog. I didn't mean to neglect you. For a long time, I wasn't really sure what to write about, but today I decided, why not just jump right in? So here goes.

I'm a recent college graduate, still in the process of trying to find a full-time job. But while I'm doing that, I've found that all this lack of structure has me missing school, classes, even homework. So I've decided to be my own teacher.

I've always been interested in languages -- so far in school I've studied Spanish, Japanese, and Latin. My latest project? Teach myself American Sign Language.

I learned some signs when I was younger through a group one of my neighbors formed, and the one thing that I managed to remember this whole time was the fingerspelling alphabet. But recently, I found myself wanting to learn more. So what did I do? I ransacked my local library, checked out half of the books and videos and dictionaries they had on ASL, and here I am, trying to learn sign language. Wish me luck!

Hi.

Here, have a cookie.

Don't worry about the crumbs, my non-existent Roomba will get them.