Learn Sign Language Basics

Series Summary

Sign language, an often overlooked language, is incredibly beneficial to know and fun to learn. American sign language is very easy to learn for native English speakers and requires only a modicum of dedication, but the benefits of knowing sign language are immense. Imagine being able to communicate with someone who is often ignored because they cannot hear or speak the same language as those around them. Those who are hearing impaired deal with this on a daily basis. Imagine what an impact it could make their lives to have one more person connect with them by speaking their language. Most likely that would come naturally for you if you only knew how to sign. Well if you would like to learn, you can get some basic lessons from our sign language expert. In this free sign language video, learn how to sign from sign language expert Melissa Schenk. Melissa will teach and demonstrate how to sign the entire alphabet and how to sign numbers 1-10.

Video Transcript

"Hello! My name is Melissa Schenk and on behalf of Expert Village, today we are going to be learning sign language. In the upcoming clips we are going to learn how to sign the alphabet and the numbers 1 through 10. In this clip, let's talk about the basics of sign language. First what are you gong to be using sign language for. Is it going to be communicate with someone who perhaps has special needs or some people even like to use sign language to communicate in some secret language that others may not be able to understand. So we first need to talk about the basics of sign language. The sign images when we talk about the alphabet in the upcoming clips, are numbers from 1 to 10. You have to realize that in signing what you see here, the sign images are going to be displayed from the prospective of the viewer. You, not my prospective of the signer. So very important to keep in mind the sign images that we are going to be showing you I will show you some side angles as well but very important to keep in mind is going to be from the viewer's prospective not the signer. So a good thing to do is to imagine that someone is signing while you are reviewing the segments. That is exactly what it is going to be. I will sign to you and you will be the reviewer. Now two things to keep in mind are facial expression and body language; very important. With facial expression this include this like raising and lowering your eyebrows. With body language it is integral to signing. These two actions alone give meaning to sign language. It is much like vocal inflection and the tone of someone's voice like what I am talking right now. So it is very important thing to keep in mind facial expressions and body language when using sign language."