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That's one benefit of learning ASL. I could practice pretty much whenever I want, because I can sign things as I'm just talking to someone in English. I haven't actually been doing that, but I should start. I told my husband I might do that, so he isnt confused when I start signing to him while we're talking. Lol

Also, I second the advice to watch movies in the language you're learning. There's a show called Switched at Birth that I really enjoy, and there are a lot of deaf people in that show, and I have learned a LOT just from watching it. I've probably watched that whole series about 3 times, and the most recent time I watched it, I tried, whenever I could, to not read the subtitles and just watch the signing and translate it myself. I'm not quite there yet in being able to do that, but it was a good challenge and good practice.

I've also started signing things as I'm watching TV by myself. Sometimes I'll just pick a sentence a character just said and finger spell it, so I can get used to finger spelling more quickly. I've known the entire ASL alphabet for a long time, like since I was a kid, but I'm still really slow with using it and understanding it.

 

Gotta check out Switched at Birth. Simultaneous translation is very hard and requires a lot of focus. I'm just curious if there are any punctuation signs (period, comma, question mark, exclamation point, colon)in the ASL or any other special signs that show the function of a word or sentence.

 

A lot of it is context clues, order of signs, and facial expressions. There's no punctuation. In fact, many articles and unimportant words are dropped in ASL.

For example, if I wanted to say "strawberries are good" I would simply sign "strawberries" and "good."

And as another example, if I had a neutral expression or a smile on my face and I signed "you," "like," and "strawberries," then it would be assumed that I'm making a declarative statement: you like strawberries. But if I furrowed my brows, questioningly, and signed "you," "like," and "strawberries," then it would be understood as a question: Do you like strawberries?

In the following question, the bolded words wouldn't be signed:
"Do you want to go to the store?"
And facial expressions would make it obvious that it's a question.

I'm still a bit unclear on the order of signs in a sentence, though. The rules on that are more complex than I had previously learned. But for the most part it seems like the more important subject comes first. Like if I wanted to say I have "six apples" I would sign the word "apple" first, then the number six.

 

Creo que tú eres un fuerte adversario también, @engelman . Yet, my Spanish is limited to present tense so far , so don't ask me about my past. Yesterday, I created a simple app to add Spanish letters that why I don't need to figure out how to switch keyboards.

I've done my Spanish reviews. Yesterday I took my wife to a Mexican restaurant - I ordered, which turned out to be a mistake as the meat kept falling out out all the time. But it was delicious. We were listening to Spanish songs and there was a list of songs displayed on a TV screen - I could understand several titles out of 20. But I had satisfaction I could understand anything at all. A lot of titles contained the word conjugated "olvilar" (forget). What do you want to forget? - I don't know. Gotta learn more

I also used to read a simplified book in German - it was a novel about a missing girl and the teacher was suspected. But before I finished the book I had given up on German because it was rumbling in my head instead of English. I also began to mix it with English. When I wanted to be fluent in English, German words began to pop up and interfere.

It's not the case with Spanish.

 

Sign language varies, yes. "ASL" stands for American Sign Language, specifically. So that would be what most deaf people in the U.S. would use.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sign_languages

 

It would make sense to make a universal sign language since the deaf use hand symbols. But the world and life aren't logical.

 

Learning languages takes time. That's why I'm sticking to Spanish and strengthening English. Yo aprendo dos idiomas. I still come across new words - other synonyms of synonyms or formal synonyms or slang synonyms. The list goes on. I sometimes wonder if the words I had learnt at the beginning are still up-to-date.

 

For that matter, a universal verbal language would also make sense.

 

gut gemacht

 

I have the same problem with some words in Spanish. Some are easy (similar to my language or English) whereas some don't make sense to me. All the verbs ending in -se. I thought it was a reflexive forms - myself, yourself. But in Spanish it doesn't make sense
Me levanto a las once. (I get up myself - no).

 

What version of Spanish do you speak @engelman ? I decided to choose Mexican because there is such course for Duolingo. Initially, I just wanted a language that is easy and pleasant to learn with easy pronunciation (unlike French), relatively easy grammar (the questions and negations is Spanish are awesome !!!) with some interesting culture to keep me motivated. In fact, I don't know why I'm learning it I guess to boast and stand out (more and more people speak English). I wanted to learn a new skill. I needed a distraction from PMO and problems at work. I love watching American movies and TV shows so Mexicans are sometimes in the cast and I wanted to understand what they are talking about. Last but not least, Spanish is the second or first in the number of speakers depending on the way of counting, I am so ignorant and cut off from that culture by not knowing the language well.

 

I mean, you could sort of make a similar argument for words, couldn't you? If we all just decided to learn a universal language, we could. Why do I call a chair a chair and a Spanish-speaking person calls it a silla?

I'm not sure if there is a reason why the languages vary, but I'm sure the various sign languages developed over time. Some probably developed independently of each other, so they didn't have the same signs. They just happened to come up with different ones.

But I get what you mean. Some signs are intuitive to the actual action or thing you're describing. Like eat, for example:




But some signs are somewhat linked to actually words, so they wouldn't make as much sense in a different language.

I'll give you an example. The sign for the phrase "I love you" looks like this:



This sign is a combination of the letters i, L, and Y. Which makes sense for the English language, because those are the first letters of the words "I Love You."

I'm not sure what "I love you" looks like in other sign languages, but that's just one example of the fact that many signs in ASL are closely related to the actual English words they come from.

Also, even those more intuitive signs I talked about above (which I just learned are called iconic signs) could seem intuitive to one person and not to another.

For example, this is the sign for house (this is the best picture I could find. It's easier to see in video form, if you want to Google it):



It looks like the kind of thing a little kid would draw if they're drawing a house. The pointed roof, going down to straight walls. But there are plenty of places in the world where their homes look nothing like that. So I'm not sure if they would use that sign, because it would no longer be intuitive for them.

 

And here's the Polish sign for: I love you.

 

We have a saying in my language that fits exactly your post:
"The further you go into the forest, the more trees. "

 

That's actually sort of similar to ASL, for "love," as well. It would be another way to say I love you, if I pointed at myself, then did that sort of hugging sign, then pointed at you.

The hand sign is just a way to say the whole phrase in one gesture

 

Lo siento mis amigos but I'm back to Day 1 Spanish lol. Will make sure to tackle this task much earlier in the day instead of before going to bed.

 

I used to do all other things and left JavaScript or Spanish as hobbies for the last minute before going to bed. It's not productive. Languages and programming require attention and memory and cannot be done late night. It can only lead to frustration in my case. Sometimes the things that bugged me in the evening and seemed to have no solution I managed to solve the next day without hussle.