Tag Archives: ASL

Trilingual Alphabet Signs (Free Download!)

Posted by on December 28, 2011 No comments

This blog post is brought to you by the letter 'A'.

I actually finished this months ago, but I’ve been so busy with grad school and whatnot I haven’t gotten around to writing about it. Here it finally is, offered as-in and without fanfare.

My wife and I have been using Signing Time videos to teach our kids ASL since Alex was four months old. Ever Alex got good at identifying letters I’ve wanted to combine reading English and learning ASL in order to ease the kids (and me) into learning Latin. Why Latin? As the root of all romantic languages, it’s the piano of languages. It’s also the official language of the Roman Catholic Church, to which we belong. It took me a long time to think of how to achieve my goal, though.

I don’t recall what inspired my eventual solution, and I’m sure someone deserves credit that they won’t get. That solution was to create a series of mini-posters that unified the English alphabet, the ASL alphabet, English words, and Latin words.

  • The upper left corner has an upper- and lower-case letter.
  • The center has the ASL hand sign for the letter.
  • The lower right corner has three words: a name, a religious word in English, and a religious word in Latin.

I had to cheat a little bit with the English and Latin religious words. A lot of Catholic words in English are derived from Latin words. Also, some of the letters were hard to think of Latin religious words for, so I resorted to Greek for them (e.g., kyrie).

Anyhow, here are the fruits of my labors in Microsoft Publisher format for those who want to customize the posters and in PDF for those who just want to print them out. Let me know what you think. If you like them, be sure to spread the word. If you don’t, remember that they’re free before complaining. ;)

Our First Signed Mass

Posted by on July 31, 2011 No comments

Fr. Walter Rydzon signs the mass as Bishop Zubik celebrates at St. Justin Church.

Since our whole family has been enjoying learning ASL signs, and we’re Catholic, we thought attending a bilingual ASL/English mass would be an interesting and edifying experience. It took us a while, but we finally got around to doing it last week. It was an interesting and generally positive experience.

[Many of my observations are conspicuously Catholic, and would likely fit better on my faith blog, but I didn't want to break my write-up into two posts. Deal. ;P]

The deaf communities masses are celebrated at St. Justin, a church in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Getting there was interesting, thanks to the steep hills, narrow roads (some cobblestone), and tight turns. Parking was mildly challenging as well. If masses there had greater attendance, I can’t imagine where everyone would park. I don’t think there were more than about 30 people in the congregation, most of whom seemed to come from a nearby old folks’ home, so on-street parking was adequate.

The low attendance was the first thing I noticed about mass at St. Justin. Indeed, the congregation wasn’t only sparse, but it was predominantly elderly. Sadly, I’m somewhat accustomed to seeing greying congregations, but I was surprised by the number of elderly deaf parishioners. I expected that a mass drawing people from Youngstown, Ohio and Johnstown would have demographics more similar to the region’s general population. Granted, Allegheny and surrounding counties give Florida a run for its money in terms of senior citizen numbers. However, I really thought there’d be more young people. Where do all the city’s deaf children, adolescents, and young adults go to mass if not St. Justin?

It’s always sad to see a parish in decline, but seeing such a special community and ministry in peril seemed particularly tragic. There was more that caught my notice, though, so I’ll move on.

Read more »

Boy Talk

Posted by on April 10, 2011 No comments

Let’s catch up with the boys’ development. :)

Joel

  • 02/21 said “bubble” and “juice” (“joo”)
  • 02/22 said “Alex” (“Abix” or “Ah-eh”)
  • 02/26 stepped into his pants to help me dress him
  • 02/27 said “I did it”
  • 03/03 said “bear”
  • 03/17 said “Lily” (“Oh-wee”)
  • 04/01 said “Thomas” (“Domeh”) and “Toby” (“Doby”)
  • 04/04 signed “cereal”

Alex

  • 03/05 was seen playing imaginatively with his trains; “Thomas, what are you doing in Percy’s shed?”
  • 03/26 pointed to a picture of evergreens and said “Those are conifer trees!” (Thank you, They Might Be Giants! :) )

Talk, Talk. We Like to Talk.

Posted by on February 8, 2011 No comments

Joel’s been steadily adding to his vocabulary.

  • 01/22: signed “thank you”
  • 01/24: said “pineapple” (“pie-apple”)
  • 01/27: said “doggie”
  • 01/31: signed “eat”
  • 02/02: attempted to sign “pineapple” and “pear”
  • 02/05: said “all done” (“ah dah”)
  • 02/06: said “up” (“uh” or “ungh“)
  • 02/08: said and signed “hot”

Whatchu Talkin’ ‘Bout, Willis…er…Joel?

Posted by on January 22, 2011 No comments

Joel (15mo) doesn’t speak many words yet. He babbles a lot, and he says a few words that are clear enough to understand, but he’s pretty hard to understand most of the time. Most of the words he speaks he’s spoken for a while now. That might be changing soon, though. He’s started signing. :) His vocabulary is still small, but I think it has potential to grow more quickly than his spoken vocabulary. At the very least, I think signing will help with two-way communication in general. So far he signs “hat”, “baby”, “please”, and “all done”. All but the first have developed in the last week or so. Here’s what he knows so far (that I’ve clearly deciphered), roughly in order of appearance:

  • bye-bye (say)
  • please (say, “pees”)
  • thank-you (say, “dah-oo”)
  • banana (say, “nana”)
  • ball (say, “baa”)
  • book (say, “boo”)
  • Mommy (say, usually “Mama”)
  • hat (sign)
  • no (say)
  • Daddy (say)
  • yes (say, “yeah”, not often)
  • eat (say, “eeeeeeee”, very infrequent)
  • baby (say and sign)
  • please (sign)
  • all done (sign)

Also, while quieter and seemingly less confident than his brother was, he enjoys helping us read “Moo Baa La La La“ by Sandra Boynton. :)

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