Common mistakes

1. Many mistakes made by beginning fingerspellers.

   Letters

   In most drawings or illustrations of the American Manual Alphabet, some of the letters are depicted from the side to better illustrate the desired handshape; however in practice, the hand should not be turned to the side when producing the letter.

   • Important exceptions to the rule that the palm should always be facing the viewer.

   • The hand in an ergonomically neutral position.

   Rhythm, speed & movement

   • In fingerspelling, your hand should be at shoulder height, and should not 'bounce' with each letter.

   • 'Bouncing' the letters makes your fingerspelling difficult to read, even for native signers.

   • Your hand should stay in one place and only the handshape changes (and orientation for some letters). If you have trouble doing this, you might want to hold your forearm with your non dominant hand in order to force your spelling hand to stay still.

   • .An exception to this sometimes appears at the beginning of a word.

   • Do not concentrate on speed, as fast fingerspelling with poorly formed handshapes will be difficult to read.

   • The first letter may be held for the length of a letter extra as a cue that the signer is about to start fingerspelling.

   • As well, clear handshapes are much easier to read than fast fingerspelling

   • Try to fingerspell the whole word at the same speed, not speeding up or slowing down. A pause indicates the beginning of a new word, so if you suddenly slow down because a letter combination is difficult, your reader may think you are starting a new word, leading to misunderstanding.

   Numbers

   Another mistake made by people in fingerspelling alphabet is the signing of the cardinal numbers.

   • 1 - 5 with the palm facing out.

   • The cardinal numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 should be signed palm in (towards the signer). This is in contrast with the cardinal numbers 6-9 which should be produced with the palm turned to face the person being addressed.

   • As with the letter O, the zero should not be turned to the side, but shown palm facing forward.

   This applies only to the cardinal numbers however. Using numbers in other situations, such as with for showing the digits of the time for example, has different rules. When signing the time, the numbers are always facing the person being addressed, even the numbers one through five. Other signing situations involving numbers have their own norms that must be learned on a case by case basis.

 

Benificial Steps To Learn Sign Language