corvi | 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.

Queer ASL class #2

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