Yes, you can. However, there tend to be variations on different signs, which can make this very difficult. My suggestion? Learn as much as you can from the book, then talk to some other ‘signers’ and gain from their knowledge as well. Good luck to you!
well you can if you want to learn basics….
you won’t be able to do it fluently or really know how the deaf use it though
you should study deaf people or take lessons or have someone teach you in person this way you can get something up to date
if you yor’ere still confused, think of it this way:
imagine you came to America only speaking idk like gibberish or something but you couldn’t hear anybody speak it and someone handed you a book describing teh language and its grammer and told you top learn the language. know compare that to if yu came to america speaking gibberish but had someone teach it to you and heard it from others. Big difference in how you master it and how well you master it, right? bu if your’re not really interested in becoming fluent in the language, a book is good for short demonstrates, bu not for conversations.
If it has other symbols than just the ABC’s. The have hand movements that mean mutliply words. It not just spelling out everything. And sign language is a little different in each state. It just depends on what the book is. And there are slang just like in english. You will learn more when you start using sign language in the real world.
You can learn signs, but not sign language. There is more to sign language that just memorizing how to move your fingers. There is a different grammar to sign language. It is far more complicated than most people think.
No.
It would be equivalent to knowing a whole lot of words in a spoken language but not how to string them together in sentences.
Photos or drawings in a book can’t show the movements that modify the meaning of the handshapes or how one sign transitions into the next one.
There is a lot more to sign languages than just handshapes.
Rather take a proper course in the language.
Well , Yes and No.
Yes …. you can learn but you won’t be able to know it all because you won’t be able to sign smooth like me because I am Deaf and ASL is my first language.
No… you will never understand Deaf people’s grammar because they are far different than English grammar.
If your heart tell you that you can do it then your heart is wrong.
In some ways yes and in someways no.
I say that because when you are learning another language and yet you chose to learn from a book, it can get boring after a while. When you are learning another language, it’s best to learn it in a group of people like in a Sign Language class. It can help if you watch movies with only people who do Sign Language.
Memorizing the signs from a book is like memorizing foreign words from a dictionary. You can learn many words this way, but not the grammar and you won’t be able to use sign language correctly or fluently by just memorizing the signs. You’d need to learn the grammar and then get lots of practice using sign language.
In short… no.
First off, I have seen many of those books, and many are outdated and EXTREMELY hard to understand. You may easily misinterpret a picture and wind up using a wrong sign or something that is not a word at all.
Secondly, there are many signs for each English word. ASL is a lot more literal than English, so just because you’d use a word in English doesn’t mean you’d use the same sign. For example, there are at least 6 different ways to sign the English word, “BREAK,” depending on the context. When trying to learn from a book, it is nearly impossible to learn which signs are most appropriate in different situations.
As others have said, ASL also has a complex and unique grammatical structure, which cannot be learned from a book.
Books can help teach some basics and may help clarify some signs for you, but they cannot teach you the language entirely and are no substitute for interacting with native signers.
Yes, you can. However, there tend to be variations on different signs, which can make this very difficult. My suggestion? Learn as much as you can from the book, then talk to some other ‘signers’ and gain from their knowledge as well. Good luck to you!
well you can if you want to learn basics….
you won’t be able to do it fluently or really know how the deaf use it though
you should study deaf people or take lessons or have someone teach you in person this way you can get something up to date
if you yor’ere still confused, think of it this way:
imagine you came to America only speaking idk like gibberish or something but you couldn’t hear anybody speak it and someone handed you a book describing teh language and its grammer and told you top learn the language. know compare that to if yu came to america speaking gibberish but had someone teach it to you and heard it from others. Big difference in how you master it and how well you master it, right? bu if your’re not really interested in becoming fluent in the language, a book is good for short demonstrates, bu not for conversations.
If it has other symbols than just the ABC’s. The have hand movements that mean mutliply words. It not just spelling out everything. And sign language is a little different in each state. It just depends on what the book is. And there are slang just like in english. You will learn more when you start using sign language in the real world.
You can learn signs, but not sign language. There is more to sign language that just memorizing how to move your fingers. There is a different grammar to sign language. It is far more complicated than most people think.
No.
It would be equivalent to knowing a whole lot of words in a spoken language but not how to string them together in sentences.
Photos or drawings in a book can’t show the movements that modify the meaning of the handshapes or how one sign transitions into the next one.
There is a lot more to sign languages than just handshapes.
Rather take a proper course in the language.
Well , Yes and No.
Yes …. you can learn but you won’t be able to know it all because you won’t be able to sign smooth like me because I am Deaf and ASL is my first language.
No… you will never understand Deaf people’s grammar because they are far different than English grammar.
If your heart tell you that you can do it then your heart is wrong.
In some ways yes and in someways no.
I say that because when you are learning another language and yet you chose to learn from a book, it can get boring after a while. When you are learning another language, it’s best to learn it in a group of people like in a Sign Language class. It can help if you watch movies with only people who do Sign Language.
Memorizing the signs from a book is like memorizing foreign words from a dictionary. You can learn many words this way, but not the grammar and you won’t be able to use sign language correctly or fluently by just memorizing the signs. You’d need to learn the grammar and then get lots of practice using sign language.
In short… no.
First off, I have seen many of those books, and many are outdated and EXTREMELY hard to understand. You may easily misinterpret a picture and wind up using a wrong sign or something that is not a word at all.
Secondly, there are many signs for each English word. ASL is a lot more literal than English, so just because you’d use a word in English doesn’t mean you’d use the same sign. For example, there are at least 6 different ways to sign the English word, “BREAK,” depending on the context. When trying to learn from a book, it is nearly impossible to learn which signs are most appropriate in different situations.
As others have said, ASL also has a complex and unique grammatical structure, which cannot be learned from a book.
Books can help teach some basics and may help clarify some signs for you, but they cannot teach you the language entirely and are no substitute for interacting with native signers.