AY Honors/Sign Language/Answer Key

The American Sign Language alphabet is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language when spelling individual letters of a word is the preferred or only option, such as with proper names or the titles of works. Letters should be signed with the dominant hand and in most cases, with palm facing the viewer.

Chart

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Common mistakes made by beginners

Many mistakes made by beginning fingerspellers are directly attributable to how the manual alphabet is most often shown in graphics.

Mistakes with letters

In most drawings or illustrations of the alphabet, some of the letters are depicted from the side to better illustrate the desired handshape even though, in practice, the hand should not be turned to the side in order to produce the letter. The letters C and O are two that are often mistakenly turned to the side by beginners who become used to seeing them from the side in illustrations. Important exceptions to the rule that the palm should always be facing the viewer are the letters G and H. These two letters should be made, not with the palm facing the viewer or the speaker, but with the palm facing sideways - the hand in an ergonomically neutral position.

Mistakes with numbers

Another mistake made by people faithfully following the pictures in most illustrations of the ASL fingerspelling alphabet is the signing of the cardinal numbers 1 - 5 with the palm facing out. The cardinal numbers one, two, three, four, and five should be signed palm in (towards the signer). This is in contrast with the cardinal numbers six through nine which should be produced with the palm turned to face the person being addressed.

As with the letter O, the zero should not be turned to the side, but shown palm facing forward.

This applies only to the cardinal numbers however. Using numbers in other situations, such as with for showing the digits of the time for example, has different rules. When signing the time, the numbers are always facing the person being addressed, even the numbers one through five. Other signing situations involving numbers have their own norms that must be learnt on a case by case basis.

How the manual alphabet is used

To learn more about how the American Sign Language alphabet is used and how to avoid common fingerspelling mistakes made by inexperienced signers, see the article on fingerspelling.

Use for sign languages other than ASL

The ASL alphabet is used with minor modification in Paraguay, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Hongkong, Taiwan, and Singapore. The Asian countries just listed modify the T, for the ASL T is considered obscene. Instead, they use the T of the Irish manual alphabet, which is like an ASL X, but with the thumb tucked into the index finger (that is, the index finger wraps around the tip of the thumb). In Thailand, one indicates points on the left hand for the tone and vowel marks of the Thai alphabet, and aspiration is not indicated. The Paraguay alphabet is identical to ASL, except for the addition of the letter Ñ, which is an N swiveled at the wrist so that the fingers move side to side, and the letters LL and RR, which are L and R plus movement to the side.

ASL appears to form the basis of the "international manual alphabet", which is used in Germany, Austria, Norway, and Finland. The F, P, and T may be slightly modified, but the details vary from source to source:

with P, the thumb may touch the tips of the middle, ring, and little fingers, but be otherwise similar; with F and T, the thumb may touch the outside of the bent first knuckle of the index finger, with the fingers not spread for F.
or, F and P may be identical with ASL, but T is like G with the thumb placed atop the first knuckle of the index finger.

The additional letters also vary according to language, source, and date. Currently, German Ä, Ö, Ü, and ß are signed like A, O, U, and S but with a downward motion, while SCH is a 5 hand (palm forward). In Norwegian and Finnish, the letters Ä, Å, Ö, Ø are derived by moving A and O (in the case of Å, in a small window-washing circular motion), and it is the Æ that gets the 5 hand (perhaps somewhat flexed).