Queer ASL class #2

Second class! This one we learned colours (most colours are just the initial letter made as a signed letter, then rotated away from yourself), clothing items (mostly easy-to-remember pantomime-ish things), and how to ask questions along the lines of "who is the person in the red shirt?"

Fun things:

•  ASL has grammatically-meaningful facial expressions! Eek! I have a hard time remembering to do various things with my eyebrows when signing. I hope that starts feeling more natural at some point.

• ASL has loanwords from English. Initially, the word would have been signed by fingerspelling individual letters, but over time it evolved into a sign sort of blended from the various letter shapes, with of them dropped or not entirely formed. Makes sense; it all seems pretty similar to the way English adapts loanwords to its own pronunciation; I doubt the way I say "corsage" is at all like a French speaker would. When writing ASL these are sometimes indicated with a # in front of the word, like #ALL, which is distinct from ALL.

• We did an exercise describing what we were wearing. My answer was HAT BLACK SHIRT BLACK PANTS BLACK BOOTS BLACK and the instructor said #ALL BLACK? and I wish I'd had the presence of mind to spell G O T H, I think it would have been pretty funny

• ASL doesn't really have pronouns, you just point to people.

• This class is philosophically opposed to any gendered signs, so we just refer to everyone as PERSON. I appreciate the convenience.

• juli  and I are making good use of ASL's WHAT. We signed it at an unknown mushroom today while we were out walking

Here's the unknown mushroom, an Apricot Jelly, Guepinia helvelloides.