What I Learned Today

Our American Sign Language class continues to build vocabulary and learn new things.

One of my favorite parts of the class is at the beginning when Dr. Eleweke asks us “HOW YOUR WEEKEND?” We don’t have enough ASL vocabulary to answer, so we type our answers in the chat and he teaches us the relevant signs on the spot. So at the start of our last class, I got to learn how to sign “ME PILOT” and “FLYING CLUB WASH PLANES”.

The sign for PILOT that we learned is FLY+PERSON (like teacher is TEACH+PERSON and student is LEARN+PERSON). The hand sign for FLY/PLANE is, charmingly, like the sign for “I love you” but held horizontally (and you get to zip it around to show the plane flying :) ). The PERSON (-ER) ending is a downward gesture with both hands held like blades in front of you. I also see that some people sign it as FLY/PLANE+DRIVER.

We learned a couple of signs for WASH, which allows you to distinguish between washing your hands (rubbing them against each other) versus washing a large wall or window (or airplane) (scrubbing an invisible large surface in front of you). For “FLYING CLUB” we had FLY plus C-shape hands making a circle in front of us, I think denoting a group of people.

Then in the lesson itself, we learned the numbers from 1-99.
Me: “What about 100?”
Dr. Eleweke: “We’ll do 100 next time. You are overlearning, ha ha!”

Double-digit numbers (22, 33, …) are signed with the same digit bounced to the left and right. Numbers that have two different digits from the range 6-9 (e.g., 67, 86, 98) are “rocking” numbers where you rock your hand from side to side so these digits are easier to distinguish. Curiously, you don’t do left-right for the first-second digit but instead “higher” for the larger digit and “lower” for the smaller digit. So for me, signing with my right hand, it’s 6-low/right + 7-high/left for 67 and 9-high/left + 6-low/right for 96. A little mind-bending!

Learning 1-99 seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn and practice things like “how old are you?” and generate personal answers, but this didn’t happen. Trying to think of ways to practice numbers, I did manage to interject “ME HAVE 7 NIECES, NEPHEWS” and I was thrilled that he understood me!

Next we learned several adjectives so we can answer HOW-YOU? and HOW YOU FEEL? These words include FINE, GOOD, HUNGRY, TIRED, HAPPY, ANGRY, EXCITED, PASSIONATE, SAD, CRANKY, ANXIOUS, SCARED, SICK, STRESSED, CONFUSED, CALM, HEALTHY, PATIENT, BUSY, FEEL STRONG, WEAK. Lots to practice before next time!

Our local community college, Linn-Benton Community College, is offering a beginning sign language (ASL) class, which is taught by Zoom. I’ve been hoping to take a class on this subject for some time now, so this is my chance! At first I was a little disappointed that it was being taught by Zoom, but now that we’ve had our first class meeting, I discovered some interesting advantages of that format.

The instructor is Dr. Jonah Eleweke, who holds two Ph.D.s (!) and is a vibrant, energetic, friendly, and fun instructor. (I admire how he keeps the energy level high even via Zoom – I know how hard that can be!) So far, there are just three students, including me, which gives the class a chatty, intimate feeling. Dr. Eleweke plunged us right in, signing repeatedly, “GOOD EVENING!” as we joined the session, smiling and grinning in welcome.

Here’s where the Zoom format came in handy. Dr. Eleweke alternated between typing into the chat window and signing, so we could make the connection. It felt like being immediately immersed, although it wasn’t technically a full immersion since we were able to read translations and make connections that way. But it was an interesting experience, to have _everyone_ on the Zoom call muted, and this continual silence, with avid attention on visual cues and smiles and nods. I wondered, indeed, how he would have taught the same content in person – maybe hand-writing on the chalkboard? Undoubtedly this was easier.

We covered the manual alphabet, then moved on to signs for greeting, asking people’s names, and some basic vocabulary. Dr. Eleweke had slides to both introduce content and to provide practice sentences for us to sign. We’d follow along slowly as he signed it first, then sign (simultaneously) while he somehow watched us all make our attempts. The slides were another useful aspect because he could just move his red arrow around to different words or sentences to prompt us about what to sign.

One downside was that it we couldn’t really get individual feedback or corrections. In person, you can face an individual and direct comments to them, but on Zoom we’re all flattened and you can’t see where someone’s gaze is directed. I wished we had had a chance to practice signing either individually (to Dr. Eleweke) or to each other. We had a 15-minute break in the middle of class, and right before class resumed, another student and I practiced the greeting dialogue with each other, which was fun :)

A: HELLO. MY NAME ____. YOUR NAME, WHAT?
B: MY NAME ____. NICE MEET YOU.
A: NICE MEET YOU.
B: BYE-BYE. SEE YOU LATER!
A: SAME-SAME.

We also covered some interesting grammatical points. When signing a dialogue yourself (like doing both A and B above), you shift your body left and right to indicate who is communicating. Also, nouns are (often? usually?) signed “twice” in that, for example, “NAME” has you tap your hands together twice. It seems that this is a method for distinguishing related verbs (sign once) from nouns (sign twice). (Btw, I love this example sentence from that page: English: “I like to fly small planes.” Sign: SMALL-PLANES FLY LIKE ME)

Overall it was a very fun class. Dr. Eleweke was constantly positive, joking, encouraging, and patient. I’m looking forward to learning more!

Recently I discovered how Phoenix, Arizona, got its name. In ancient times, people living in the area dug a bunch of canals (135 miles of them!) to direct water from the Salt River to the plains where they were growing crops. In 1867, the area was colonized by white settlers who also dug canals and named the town Swilling’s Mill (after founder Jack Swilling). Darrell Duppa suggested the name Phoenix, “inasmuch as the new town would spring from the ruins of a former civilization.” I think this is pretty cool – a recognition (however subtle) that history didn’t begin when white pioneers reached an area.

… and facial expressions! A talented friend of mine started offering online lessons in American Sign Language (ASL), and so far we’ve covered basic signs (e.g., please, thank you, how do you sign…?), the manual alphabet, and how to express basic needs (e.g., hunger, thirst, sleepiness). I have dim memories of learning some ASL in high school, and it seems that the alphabet, at least, stuck with me. It’s great to learn a bunch of new vocabulary. (The image at right shows the sign for “learn”.)

I don’t know if or when I’ll get to put ASL into practice, but regardless I’m enjoying puzzling through a new kind of grammar and the… hm… performance aspect of signing. It’s not just about moving your hands; the aspects of eye contact and facial expression are also necessary, and even though it’s mostly intuitive so far, it’s new/foreign to have to think consciously about what expression goes with the sign :) I get the sense that the expressions are much more vivid and large than they are when I’m speaking English. (I’m sure it becomes natural over time.)

Some other ideas I found valuable that we’ve covered so far:

• Sign language has its own grammar, and notably it is not a literal reproduction of English with hand signs (I’ve encountered this concept before and it continues to fascinate me. It makes sense to me that what would be natural and efficient in spoken language might be quite different in signed language).
• Signs have three parts: hand shape, hand position, and motion.
• We are encouraged to fingerspell words as units, so instead of thinking/spelling “b” “o” “o” “k”, you do better to think sign-b-sign-o-sign-o-sign-k as a unit. This sounds similar to what you’d like to achieve with any foreign language: blending units into chunks to make communication more natural.

I’m looking forward to next week’s lessons!

Morse code just got 10 times cooler – or maybe just 10 times easier to learn!

A few years ago, I stumbled on the mind-blowing binary tree version of Morse code. I was so excited about this that I downloaded a “learn Morse code” app on my phone and started practicing it, gradually working up to faster comprehension speeds. But then I got distracted by some other shiny thing and stopped practicing and Morse code went dormant in my brain.

Two days ago I re-encountered it in this amazing video by the always impressive Nelson Dellis:

Nelson gives us mnemonics for learning Morse code. This is absolutely BRILLIANT since Morse code is already audible. :) After watching his video exactly *once*, I already know Morse code for my name and can recall it with negligible effort:

-.- .. .-. ..

(mnemonic: KAN-ga-ROO i-bid ro-TA-tion i-bid)

*and* I discovered a beautiful symmetry in my Morse name!

I’m truly impressed by how quickly and easily this mnemonic sunk in. Nelson, you rock!