I am a native English speaker with a natural talent for languages. I am fluent in French and am learning Spanish. Is ASL a language that is difficult to master? (Obviously, it is different from any spoken language, but I truly know nothing about the language and am very interested.)
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You can learn the alphabet and numbers in a matter of minutes. As for the signs themselves, I am not sure, but it is a language like any other, although based on English.
ASL will require a lot of study. Since you seem to have a knack for languages, it might be easier for you to learn. I should warn however, that ASL might be harder to learn since you might not be good at visual languages the way you are with hearing ones. Of course you will never know this unless you try. As the previous poster mentioned, the alphabet and numbers are not too hard to learn. One thing he said struck my interest though. He said that signs might be a little harder to learn. I can tell you that some are and some aren’t. ASL however is not English on the hands. You do not just go and memorize an entire sign dictionary and sign the signs. “I AM A MOM” noooo. Instead you would have to sign “I MOM”, “MOM I”, “I MOM I”. All of these are correct phrases in ASL and if you simply learned signs and signed them in English order you would not be signing ASL but rather SEE/ Pidgin or some other mehods that are not actual languages. The “I am a mom” sentence also involves facial expressions to represent the verb, “to be” since it is not made with signs; this would be done by nodding one’s head in affirmation. Other body movements help make up ASL’s complicated grammar as well. Asl is also a very contextual language; for example: the phrases “I RAN a mile today”, “I am RUNNING late”, and “She is RUNNING for office” all use the word run but only the first one would use the sign “RUN” the second would probably omit the word run completely in ASL and the third would probably use the sign COMPETE. I would suggest you find classes and try to immerse yourself in the Deaf community. TO start off you can go to http://www.lifeprint.com this is a great free website with the equivalent of ASL I and II and some level III lessons. I would also check out the library there and read all of the articles to get a better understanding of the language. Also check out the sites ASL journal at http://www.aslpah.com it has various questions and answers.
I recommend to use the online sign dictionary signingsavvy.com along with the lessons. There is also aslpro.com but I like signingsavvy better because once you register for free you get explanations on how the signs are done. I use both to try and get as much variations of a sign as I can. Remember there can be many signs for one word depending on regions. Also, for contextual meaning, signing savvy usually tells you what the English meaning is so you don’t use an incorrect sign. Aslpro can cause confusion with this and I remember some girls in my ASL class looked up the sign for might as in MAYBE and in aslpro the sign for might refers to strength or the sign POWER. In signingsavvy if you look up MIGHT the results will give you to options it will say MIGHT (as in stregth) and MIGHT(as in maybe).
Anyway, this answer got a little long but I hoped it helped some. Remember just because ASL is signed, doesn’t mean it is easier to learn than other languages. In fact, it can even be harder.