ASL Etymology Parts 3 & 4
Workshop Description:
Click here for an ASL Video of Buck introducing the workshop.
This workshop will take participants on an adventure through etymologies of American Sign Language. Like Chinese characters are taught along with stories for each set of strokes as images, the same could be done for ASL. Signs and their meanings also have their unique history. To really begin to understand the richness of ASL we must journey back to its Motherland of France and further into history behind the days of Laurent Clerc.
During this event, participants will learn the origins of many everyday ASL expressions and colloquialisms that have crossovers in French, Spanish and kin sign languages. As practitioners we present arbitrary rules of ASL as we use them and seem to know them but do we really KNOW them? Come and find out the difference between FINE and Y-EN-A-PLEIN! (sign transcribed as “FINE!”) as Buck begins to guide participants through investigations on important roots in ASL.
Workshop Objectives:
As a result of attending this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify root signs found in ASL, LSF (French sign), LSE (Spanish sign), and others within the same sign linguistic family.
- Describe parts of history, sign evolution, patterns to each other.
- Teach and interpret many ASL sign variants and colloquialisms.
Presenter Bio:
Buck Rogers, ASL Instructor, trainer, and CDI, first-generation Spanish-American family, BA, MA and 45+ doctoral hours in languages and linguistics, French, Spanish and ASL, Gallaudet U, GMU and UMD. Internship at Parisian Deaf institute, 240 hours training at Académie de la Langue des Signes Française, 80 hours with El Grito Spanish Deaf theater. Instruction of French/LSF and Spanish/LSE to undergraduate and graduate students and faculty at Gallaudet U 1994-2006. Three decades of work experience with foreign Deaf in US and abroad mostly in Latin America. Two decades of similar workshops at local, regional, national, and international conferences.