ASL?

[inoru_no_hoshi]

So, hi. As a bit of an introduction, I'm 23, mostly deaf (diagnosed as progessive sensorineural hearing loss a little under 20 years ago; reading around, thinking, and self-observation leads me to strongly suspect the cause is a degenerative issue with the vestibulocochlear nerve. I may be an actualfax speshul snowflake! \o/ I can't afford to get it definitively diagnosed, though), and can more or less count on my fingers the ASL I know that's not fingerspelling.

I decided a few years back that not learning was probably kinda short-sighted of me, but lack of funds for lessons and lack of video-streaming internet (seriously, dialup) hampered me a lot!

Having recently upgraded to highspeed, finally, cme (who's also interested in learning) pointed out to me that there's bound to be some good instructional videos to be had out there on the intertubes.

Neither of us have any idea how to even begin looking for and weeding through videos on YouTube for good basics, though - so naturally I searched DW for a relevant comm.

And I found here! :D So, any advice?

Comments

[shoaling_souls]

ASL pro has a good dictionary online: http://www.aslpro.com/cgi-bin/aslpro/aslpro.cgi

Bill Vicars also has good online lessons which will teach you some grammar too. http://www.lifeprint.com/

If you learn best by being able to write things down, you might want to check out sign writing. Not everyone knows it, but it can be a helpful tool http://signwriting.org/

search for "asl lessons" on youtube. you'll find lots of stuff, like this which covers the "wh" question words http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG71rLgdB94

Try to sign along with the video.

Also, if you like music, there are lots of people doing "asl interpretations" of various songs, of varying quality but they can still be instructional. so, for example, you could search for "the lion sleeps tonight asl" and find a bunch of videos.

Good luck!