ASL Resources

Contents

• What are these Resources About?
• Deaf Culture & History
• Deaf Events
• Dictionaries
• Linguistics
  • Books
  • Studies
• ASL Textbooks
• Storytelling
• ASL in Daily Life
• Other ASL Pedagogy
  • Basics
  • Specifics
  • Vernacular
• Miscellaneous Sources

Heads Up

If you are not me, you should not be here! Assume that everything here is wrong and that I don’t know what I’m writing about, cuz I don’t.

What are these Resources About?

These are educational, fun, or interesting resources on ASL, Deaf culture and history, and other sign languages. Sources marked with a 🐛 emoji aren’t accessible to me, but they’re here cuz they seemed useful and maybe I’ll look at them one day.

Note to self: remember that the best teacher is a Deaf instructor or tutor. These resources help with learning but are insufficient for getting a thorough understanding of sign languages or Deaf culture.

Deaf Culture & History

• Deaf Artists. By RIT NTID.
  • Lots of info on Deaf artists and art.
• Deaf Culture That. By Thomas K. Holcomb and Anna Mindess.
  • Everything people need to know about Deaf culture and Deaf-hearing interactions.
  • Doesn’t look like it’s being updated anymore.
• Deaf Power. By Christine Sun Kim and Ravi Vasavan, amongst others.
  • Resources and info from a Deaf power perspective. There is some ASL info, too.
• Introduction to American Deaf Culture. First edition. By Thomas K. Holcomb. Published 2012.
  • I like the book a lot. It reads like a mix between a textbook and a casual account.
  • Has a companion website.
• Meeting and Interacting with Deaf People. By Belinda G. Vicars.
  • How to interact at Deaf events without seeming like a twat.
• Seeing Language in Sign: The Work of William C. Stokoe. By Jane Maher. Published 1996.
  • Part Stokoe biography and part narrative history, with a focus on Stokoe’s work on ASL linguistics and the negative reception around it.
  • Stokoe talks about learning systems theory in 1957. Way earlier than I thought systems theory originated.
• Signing Black in America. By the Language & Life Project.
  • Documentary about Black ASL.

Deaf Events

• Bay Area Asian Deaf Association.
  • Hosts events in the Bay Area.
  • No idea who they are but I liked their 2021 lunar new year video, which can be found on their Youtube channel.
• Camp Mark 7.
  • Summer camp for Deaf in very upstate NY.
• Deaf Coffee.
  • Deaf meetups around the US.
• Deaf NYC.
  • Deaf and signing events around New York City.
• Deaf Spotlight.
  • Seattle-based arts nonprofit focused on Deaf culture and sign languages.
  • Runs the Seattle Deaf Film Festival.
• Metropolitian Asian Deaf Association.
  • NY-based social club-turned-advocacy organization.
  • Is gonna host the Deaf Asian Street Festival.

Dictionaries

• American Sign Language Handshape Dictionary. By Richard A. Tennant and Marianne Gluszak Brown, and drawings by Valerie Nelson-Metlay.
  • Nice reverse dictionary, though kinda outdated. Helped me find INTERNET.
• ASL Core. By RIT NTID.
  • Suggested signs for academic + technical topics.
• ASL University, also known as Lifeprint. By William G. Vicars.
  • ASL-English dictionary with explanations of etymology and suggestions for how to memorize signs. Breaks the handshapes down which I find super useful.
  • Offers an entire ASL curriculum, which is incredible.
  • I think this was one of the first online ASL resources ever. That’s really cool.
• Handspeak. By Jolanta Lapiak.
  • Great ASL-English dictionary — arguably the best.
  • Contains an extraordinary reverse dictionary. As far as I can tell, it’s the only one online. Some signs in the main dictionary are missing in the reverse dictionary.
  • Has tutorials on grammar and conjunctions and stuff.
  • Offers fingerspelling receptive practice and number receptive practice videos.
• Signing Savvy. By a large team.
  • Useful for finding sociolinguistic or phonological variations of different signs.
  • I mostly use this to find signs that I’ve failed to find elsewhere.
• Spread the Sign. By Thomas Lydell.
  • Translations for multiple sign languages. Pretty neat, though not super comprehensive.
  • They have sentences, too.
• The Gallaudet Dictionary of American Sign Language. By GU editors and illustrators. Published 2005.
  • Not an exceptional dictionary. Mostly cuz it’s so hard to search and pics fail to capture what videos can.
  • Probably best used to remind me what signs look like. But definitely not for learning.
  • The chapter on classifiers is nice, though.
• The Gallaudet Children’s Dictionary of American Sign Language. By GU editors and illustrators. Published 2014. 🐛
  • Looks similar to the adult dictionary, but it’s more colorful, which I like. 🌈
  • Has a companion website with sentences.

Linguistics

Books

• Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language. By Scott K. Liddell. Published 2003.
  • I haven’t read too far into this book. It’s a lil beyond my understanding. 😅
• Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction. Third edition. By Clayton Valli and Ceil Lucas. Published 2000.
  • I tried to use this book to learn ASL grammar. Not successful.
  • On the 5th edition (2011) now, but I’ve only read the 3rd.
  • 5e has a list of Youtube videos in lieu of a DVD.
• Sign Languages of the World: A Comparative Handbook. Edited by Julie Bakken Jepsen, Goedele De Clerck, Sam Lutalo-Kiingi, and William B. McGregor. Published 2015.
  • I’ve only read the chapter on Inuit Uukturausingit (IUR or Inuit Sign Language).
  • No chapter on Hawaii Sign Language, though it is mentioned.
• Sign Languages: Structures and Contexts. By Joseph C. Hill, Diane C. Lillo-Martin and Sandra K. Wood. Published 2019.
  • The first ASL book I read! Turns out that studying linguistics is not the best way to learn a language.
  • Really good book. Some important things I learned:
    1. Sign languages (like all natural languages) consist of meaningless parts.
    2. There is a specific set of meaningless parts and those parts combine only in certain ways.
    3. In signs that use two hands, either the sign is symmetrical or the non-dominant hand is still. CAT and SALT are respective examples.

Studies

• ASL-Lex. By Naomi Caselli and others.
  • 2,723 signs are visualized in a network graph. Closeness is correlated with phonological relatedness.¹ Node size is correlated with sign frequency.
  • It would be nice to also have a graph focused on semantic relatedness. But that’s harder.
  • Their 2017 paper says the following:
    “For example, signs like PANTS, DRESS, and SKIRT are all fairly iconic and are produced with relatively common sub-lexical properties: the locations are all on the body (depicting where the clothes are worn), and recruit all four fingers fully extended.”
• How the Alphabet Came to Be Used in a Sign Language. By Carol Padden and Darline Clark Gunsauls. Published 2003.
  • Very cool! Mentions that ASL uses a lot of fingerspelling + suggests some reasons why.
  • Most fingerspelled words are nouns.

ASL Textbooks

• American Sign Language: A Teacher’s Resource Text On Grammar and Culture. By Charlotte Baker and Dennis Cokely. Published 1980.
  • Probably my favorite ASL book so far.
  • From 1980, so it’s old. I think most of the stuff is still good. But I’m not qualified to say.
  • ASL was recognized as a natural language only in 1960, so there’s a lot of “we don’t understand this yet.” I wish there were an updated version.
• Barron’s E-Z American Sign Language. Third edition. By David Stewart, Elizabeth Stewart, Lisa Dimling, and Jessalyn Little. Published 2011.
  • This is okay. It’s teaching me new words. Not sure the grammar stuff is super helpful, though.
• Sign-Me-Fine. By Laura Greene and Eva Barash Dicker. Published 1990.
  • ASL grammar book for kids middle school–aged and older.
  • Not very good, unfortunately. Don’t think I understand ASL grammar more after reading this.
• The ASL App. By various Deaf signers.
  • Short video lessons on ASL. Mostly vocabulary.
  • This helped me with the numbers beyond 99.

Storytelling

• Atlanta Area School for the Deaf Accessible Materials Project.
  • Kids’ books, family resources, and more.
• Aunt Alice’s ASL TV. By Alice Pascall-Speights.
  • A big YouTube playlist of ASL stories and lessons for kids.
  • My favorite is the ASL interpretation of Tuesday. Wow!
• ASL Educational Resources for Deaf Kids.
  • Google Doc of stories and other educational stuff.
• ASL Kids Club.
  • Signing videos and playlists for a wide range of kids’ ages.
• ASL Stories Directory.
  • ASL storytime! Stories from primary school books. 📖
• ASL Storytime by the Washington School for the Deaf.
  • Children’s stories interpreted in ASL.
• CBC Kids ASL Collection.
  • Consists of Silly Paws and two other ASL shows: one about dinosaurs and the other, bizarrely, about music.
• Charlie Swinbourne’s Stories. By Charlie Swinbourne.
  • By a Deaf British director depicting Deaf life in the UK. Uses BSL.
  • My current favorite is Coming Out, which is really funny.
• Dack Virnig’s Stories. By Dack Virnig.
  • Original stories that seem to use a lot of personification.
• DPAN: Kids Stories in ASL. By DPAN.
  • Kids’ stories interpreted in ASL. They seem to specialize in actually showing the physical book while signing, which means images and words can be unclear.
• Deaf Planet. By a team of people.
  • A TV show consisting of six-minute shorts centered around a hearing boy who lands on a planet full of Deaf people.
• Keith Wann: Signed Stories
  • Kids’ stories signed by a CODA comedian.
• Ms. Trina & the ASL Kids Club. By Ms. Trina.
  • Kids’ stories and basic ASL lessons for preschoolers.
• MyGo! Sign Language for Kids.
  • Kids’ shows with ASL interpretation.
• PBS Kids: Episodes in ASL.
  • Sixty ASL-interpreted episodes of kids’ shows.
• Pineapple and Cheese.
  • Has kids’ stories and some vocab in ASL.
• Silly Paws. Acting by Gaitre Persaud on CDC Kids. Published 2022–23.
  • Twenty-one short toddler-level stories in ASL.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
  • By Eyes Alive and the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. Mostly kids signing.
  • Uses REAL^SICK followed by SICK, which I haven’t seen before.²
• Sesame Street ASL songs on YouTube.
  • Some Sesame Street songs translated to ASL.
  • Joey is a performer for some of them!
• Signed Stories. By ITV.
  • Children’s stories signed in ASL or BSL.
• SignUp. By Mariella Satow and ASL interpreters.
  • Kids’ movies interpreted in ASL via a Chrome extension.
  • Unfortunately, the ASL video often isn’t well-synchronized with the movie it’s meant to be interpreting. This makes it difficult to use.
• Speak in ASL: Candid Videography. By Jolanta Lapiak.
  • Usually, hearing people can safely assume their spoken language is dominant and default. What if a Deaf person flipped the script? What if ASL were the default?
• TreeSchool and Signing Time.
  • I think these are songs with accompanied ASL? I don’t really get this TBH.

ASL in Daily Life

• ASL Nook and their YouTube channel.
  • Natural ASL, mostly by kids. Words in context. Some stories.
• List of “diverse ASL signers” on Reddit.
  • Mostly links to YouTube channels.
  • OIC Movies looks specifically made for receptive practice, but everything’s behind a memberwall.
• The Daily Moth.
  • News in ASL, mostly news relevant to the Deaf community.
• White House YouTube Channel.
  • Has ASL interpreter.

Other ASL Pedagogy

Basics

• ASL Access. By the ASL Access Board.
  • Works to ensure that there are free ASL videos available.
  • Links to a variety of ASL and English resources.
• ASL Yes. By Garrett Bose.
  • Lots of stuff on grammar and structure, including mouth morphemes. Pretty exciting.
  • Also, there’s some vocabulary stuff, too.
• Atomic Hands. By Dr. Alicia Wooten and Dr. Barbara Spiecker.
  • Scientific topics in ASL, mostly at the secondary school level and below.
  • See the STEM storybooks, STEM videos, and corresponding YouTube channel.
• Gallaudet University’s ASL Connect.
  • Very basic ASL organized by topic.
  • It’s ASL-pic and not ASL-English.
• Handspeak: Fingerspelling Receptive Practice. By Jolanta Lapiak.
  • As the title. The best fingerspelling reception videos that I’ve found so far.
• Lifeprint: Grammar. By William G. Vicars.
  • On ASL grammar. See also: the myth of STORE I GO, his webpage on ASL sentence structure, and his page on repeated movement in ASL.
• Oklahoma School for the Deaf: ASL Classes.
  • Free online classes for ASL 1 and 2. They’re asynchronous and consist of videos and written materials.
• Treehouse Video.
  • See Holcomb’s series on Deaf Centered Interpreting. Alternative link: YouTube channel.
  • Lessard’s series on classifiers: Classifers, a Closer Look.

Specifics

• ASL Deafined: Expansion Techniques.
  • Seven ASL expansion techniques briefly explained.
• ASL Rhyme and Rhythmic Songs. By Barb Wifi.
  • Some notes on ASL rhymes for kids.
• Conjunction info:
  • Brenda Lyons’s ASL Conjunctions Explained has some suggestions for conjunction memorization.
  • Jolanta Lapiak’s Introduction to Conjunctions has a non-exhaustive list of conjunctions and their use.
• English By Eye, or Read with ASL. By ASL Access.
  • All about education and teaching ASL and English.
  • Their videos focus on teaching signs with multiple meanings.
• Fingerspelling: Expressive & Receptive Fluency. By Joyce Linden Groode. Published 2004. 🐛
  • Website’s here. The trailer seems very 1990s.
  • Bill Vicars recommended an older version of this video.
• Minimal Pairs in ASL. By Jolanta Lapiak.
  • Minimal pairs are a set of words that differ only by one phoneme. In sign languages, a minimal pair differs by one parameter.
• RADSCC: ASL Lecture Series. By RIT NTID.
  • Lectures on ASL and Deaf culture, as well as their histories.
• Signplaying. By Eric Epstein.
  • Website doesn’t seem to work. But it’s apparently about creativity in ASL — wordplay, puns, poetry, that kind of stuff.
  • He presented an RIT NTID lecture on signplaying.
• The ASL Lab.
  • Some neat perspectives on ASL use and etymology.

Vernacular

• A Deaf Perspective: ASL Signs and Slang. By Rogan Shannon and Ren Putz.
  • Short video on slang and ASL-exclusive words.
• Lists of ASL idioms: Bill Vicars’s and Jolanta Lapiak’s.

Miscellaneous Sources

• ASL Signbank. By Julie A. Hochgesang and many others.
  • A collection of signs organized by glosses for the purpose of annotating ASL videos.
  • Not a learning resource.
• Lansing Community College Library Research Guide: Sign Language.
  • Lots of suggested resources, including receptive and expressive practice.
• List of ASL Resources. By K.
  • Some resources, though a lot of it isn’t useful to me in particular.
• NAD: Learning American Sign Language. By the NAD.
  • Scattered resources for learning ASL. Also has links to other resources for Deaf.
• Reddit: List of Videos for Receptive Practice.
  • Again, mostly links to YouTube channels.
• Ryan Lepic’s ASL Resources. By Ryan Lepic.
  • Hearing professor at GU.
  • The links to video resources seem helpful.
• SignWriting.
  • Sometimes referred to as Sutton SignWriting. A 2D writing system for ASL and other sign languages.
  • See the SignWriting Library for literature, dictionaries, and more.
• Symbol Font for ASL. By Murray Inman.
  • A website with compiled info about writing ASL. Very cool problem that I’ve never thought about before reading this and going on a hunt for knowledge about written ASL.
  • Seems dead. Hasn’t been an update in like a decade.
  • Jolanta Lapiak is into written ASL, too.

Footnotes

1. Phonology is the study of the meaningless parts of a word or sign.

2. Around 8:15.