How this course works
- There are seven lessons. Take them in order, or jump to the one you need.
- Every sign is told the same three ways: the handshape (what your hand looks like), the place (where it goes), and the movement (how it travels) — plus a line to remember it by.
- At the end of each lesson: Try It. Sign with your own hands, in front of a mirror or a friend. Watching is not learning — signing is.
- Your face is part of the language. Questions live in your eyebrows; feelings live on your face. The lessons will remind you.
The seven lessons
Lesson 1 — Fingerspelling — The Alphabet
4 signs: THE ALPHABET CHART, J, Z, SPELLING YOUR NAME
Lesson 7 — Simple Sentences
6 signs: MY NAME IS …, I AM LEARNING SIGN LANGUAGE, PLEASE SIGN SLOWLY, THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP…
The alphabet, demonstrated
Before Lesson 1, watch real hands spell the whole alphabet. This demonstration is by Travis Dougherty, shared freely with the world through Wikimedia Commons. He fingerspells A to Z while a voice names each letter — and every letter is also on the chart in Lesson 1.
What you will see and hear: a signer spells the alphabet letter by letter, and the voice names each letter as it is signed. Letters J and Z move — watch for the drawing motion.
Sources for the sign lessons
The alphabet pictures come from the public-domain ASL fingerspelling chart first drawn for Gallaudet, kept by Wikimedia Commons (public domain — free for everyone, forever). The alphabet demonstration video is by Fuzheado, featuring Travis Dougherty, with voice-over by Gilbert G. Lensbower, from Wikimedia Commons, shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.
The written sign descriptions (handshape, place, movement) were checked against two established ASL dictionaries: Lifeprint — ASL University (Dr. Bill Vicars) and Handspeak. Signs can vary a little from place to place and person to person, the way spoken accents do — if a deaf person shows you their way, learn their way.