A good way to
help yourself
learn ASL is to get yourself a copy of the
American Sign Language Dictionary, by Martin L.A. Sternberg. There's even a
multimedia edition available on CD-ROM which makes the drawings easier to interpret.
The
book was originally
published in 1994 (HarperCollins Publishers, Inc) and has since been
revised. It contains over 6,600
illustrations and 4,400
signs -- certainly enough to get someone started. It also houses the
simplest and
clearest illustrated
version of the American Manual Alphabet I've found. Once you get that down, you can
sign any word you can spell...which comes in
handy when you get
stuck in the middle of an ASL
conversation.
The
author is a
faculty member at
Hofstra University and
Adelphi University. He's been
deaf since age 7.