Learning ASL – Numbers and Colours

Hello everyone!

Welcome to my third blog post about ASL!

For this week, I decided that I would learn some numbers and colours in ASL. I thought that learning the numbers in ASL would be as easy as learning the alphabet. Boy, was I wrong.

The ASL numbers have a lot more rules than the alphabet. For example, when signing numbers one to five, I have to have my palm facing myself, not towards the other person. Trying to remember which way my hand had to be facing was pretty difficult for me. I continued to get mixed up with which way my hand had to be facing when I signed number eleven to fifteen.

I used a YouTube video to help me learn the number zero to thirty in ASL. I used it a lot. I watched the video at least five times before I finally figured out how my hands should look. I think that I finally have got them mastered, but I know that I still stumble on the twenty-one, eleven, and ten. Here is a video of me showing my skills. (Dexter, the dog, wanted to help me film the video this time and you can see his nose a few times throughout the video.)

Dex (Dexter) the dog

After I learnt some ASL numbers, I decided that I would learn some colours in ASL. I used another YouTube video to learn the colours. I found a lot a videos on the internet for learning colours in ASL, but most of them were geared more towards children. I decided to use a different YouTube video and I found it really easy to follow.

Side note, this video is less than a minute and I watched it so many times. It was super quick, so I would suggest that anyone else planning on using it should be ready to pause a lot.

Learning some colours in ASL were a lot easier for me to master. I showed my parents some of the things that I learnt and my dad pointed out that a lot of the colours, such as blue, purple, and green were the first letter that the colour started with, but moved. For example, blue is the letter “B” in ASL, but with movement.

Here is my video of the colours in ASL.

I have really enjoyed learning ASL these past two weeks. I continue to practice the ASL alphabet whenever I can. I also practice the numbers and colours too.

My family and friends are learning some ASL at the same time because I show them what I learn every week.

Over the next week, I would like to learn some common gestures and pronouns in ASL. I will use the first and part of the second lesson videos from the Sign Language 101 website.

Thank you for reading my blog post! I hope to see you guys next week. Comment your thoughts below or tweet me on twitter @MsOsachoff

Ashley Osachoff