I learned everything here from actual interaction with deaf people (or occasionally, with other learners) and not from books. This has definitely been a successful mission!ĪSL has quickly become my favourite language and I look forward to spending another month in the states later this year to continue working on it (after I take on two more spoken languages, the first one starting next week).Īlthough I've still got a lot to learn, I thought you might find an overview of the language interesting – based on talking to people about this mission and my own preconceptions, I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about how ASL works!

After about just 2-3 weeks of part-time work on American Sign Language (since I didn't do anything at all during Austin's SxSW conference/parties), I was able to participate in conversations with several people about many topics… and even joke, all without ever speaking. On Saturday I went to the Deaf Night Out here in Austin, where almost everyone (80 or so people that took over the bar) were deaf or hard-of-hearing.

How to sign won in sign language