By My Smart Hands, Laura Berg
Learn Your ASL Colors available on iTunes
This time we are talking about colors and some origins of American Sign Language. Historians believe that ASL was originally from France (FSL). Laurent Clerc traveled to France in search of a method of communicating to his deaf daughter. He brought back sign language and established the first deaf school in America. The theory behind how to sign colors in ASL is based on signs that relate to body colors verses non-body colors. Colors found on the body are made on the face. Colors that are not a neutral body tone are made off the body. Brown, black, and tan are made on the face. Yellow, blue, green, and purple are initialized and signed in front of the body. White is on the chest to represent purity and gray is a mix of all of the colors.
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A French teacher called “The Apostle of the Deaf in America” by generations of American deaf people. Co-founder of the first permanent school for the deaf in North America.
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Learn More about the History of ASL
American Sign Language (ASL) is the predominant sign language of deaf communities in the United States and most of anglophone Canada. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. (source: wikipedia.org [3])
Happy Singing and Signing
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Resources:
Check out: My Smart Hands Channel Trailer – They post new videos every Tuesday and Thursdays. Tuesdays are baby signing and music videos and Thursdays are lifestyle and travel videos. Visit www.mysmarthands.com [5] for more information.
Angie Craft author and teacherbrings over 26 years of experience in deaf education and is committed to serving the deaf community. Keenly aware of the isolation that deaf students often experience, Angie developed and wrote HandCraftEdASL to bridge the communication gap between deaf children who primarily use American Sign Language and their parents, peers or educators. www.handcraftedasl.com [6]
Read More ASL [7]
Helpful Articles
- Let’s Dance [8]
- ASK Angie ASL – Communication Plan [9]
- ASK Angie ASL + Tips: “Fingerspelling” [10]
- Ask Angie ASL – Independence [11]
- ASK Angie ASL – Reading Tips [12]
- Embracing Your Child’s Best Ways of Learning 12 Different Ways to Learn [13]
This post originally appeared on our March/April 2015 Magazine [14]