Yay: more fingerpelling practice!

One of the biggest challenges in learning Auslan is mastering the reading back of fingerspelling. It's something that every learner struggles with: the feelings of embarrassment from asking someone to fingerspell the same word 3 or 4 times; the feeling of panic when you start missing words during a situation which doesn't permit requests for a slower respell, not to mention the defeat you feel when you encounter a signer whose fingerspelling is just so fast that you swear you can feel your hair blowing back from your face, as if their fingers are an electric fan. Yes, learning fingerspelling can be demoralising sometimes. But there are also undeniable moments of joy, like when you do catch someone's name the first time, moments of pride when you understand a word someone else has missed, and the sheer triumph of recognising a really long word - feels to me like the Auslan equivalent of using all your letters in one go in Scrabble!

Alas, there seem to be no shortcuts to success in reading back fingerspelling. The advice on how to improve is simple: the more practice, the better, and the more varied the practice the better. That is, it's helpful to watch fingerspelling from older signers, younger singers, men, women, native signers and non-native signers, because in the real world people have different fingerspelling styles and accents.

Yet, it's difficult to find opportunities to intensively practice reading back fingerspelling. There are relatively few study materials such as CDs available for fingerspelling practice and once you know which words are on the CD it becomes obsolete. A solution to this problem using YouTube has recently occurred to my class. The idea is that signers could upload short fingerspelled lists of 20 words, creating a collection of excellent learning resources quickly and easily, available free to all. There would be a broad range of styles and accents represented. Native and fluent fingerspellers could provide expert fingerspelling modelling for learners to watch and learners could upload their videos for feedback from others. Limiting each video to 20 words would ensure that all videos are brief enough to be uploaded quickly by the makers and download quickly by the viewers.

Below are my first four efforts, available on YouTube. I chose to give each set of 20 words a theme. This gives viewers at least some contextual help in identifying the words, which is, afterall, what happens in the real world.

I've tried following these handy tips for ensuring good quality video:

• decent lighting
• including in the frame both my face and hands, so that any mouth patterns are captured (although I tried not to mouth words too overtly)
• wearing clothing that contrasts with my skin colour so my hands don't blend into my shirt
• I tried to remember to mute the video (personal choice, as a viewer could also choose to hit the mute button, however this way the no-one has to know that while I was recording this video my bloke was watching the footy, the fridge was changing gears and the cat was scratching more holes in the carpet!)
  

Now we just need to find some ways to make this catch on around the country so a good collection of videos becomes available.

Fingerspelling practice set 1: African countries


Fingerspelling practice 2: Australian towns and cities


Fingerspelling practice 3: American states


Fingerspelling practice 4: Australian birds

Fingerspelling: a definition

This semester we are doing a module concentrating on fingerspelling and numbers in Auslan. We started off by critiquing four existing definitions of fingerspelling from the literature. Some were pretty complicated and some used airy-fairy terms such as “writing in the air”. Then our teacher asked us to come up with our own definition. As per usual, I came up with an even more incomprehensible alternative, cramming way too many concepts into the definition using words that were way too cumbersome. After reflection, I realise that it’s actually pretty simple. The core concepts are:

• the two languages (one signed, one written)
• the signs and letters within those languages that make up alphabets

I came up with two more potential definitions of fingerspelling:

The use of signs in a sign language or manual code that represent letters in a spoken and written language, enabling the spelling of words from the spoken and written language using only one’s hands.

Use of the signs in a signed language or code that represent the letters in the alphabet of a written language to transliterate units of meaning from a written language into a signed language.

Neither are as elegant as they could be, but the concepts included (and those excluded) work for me because: the definition is generalisable worldwide they include both signed languages and signed codes (e.g. signed English) which both use fingerspelling. they include the element of transfer between languages or a language to a code. Thinking about this prompted me to look up fingerspelling in some nearby dictionaries. At work, we have access to the Australian Macquarie Dictionary It defines “fingerspell” like this:

A form of sign language in which the letters of the word are signed individually to spell it out.

I think this definition has at least these problems:

1. It implies that fingerspelling is a sign language of its own. As fingerspelling only consists of a meagre 26 (in Anglophone contexts) signs, this really cannot be true. It would be more accurate to say that fingerspelling is a part of sign language, not a form.
2. Restricting fingerspelling to use within a sign language also means that signed codes such as signed English are given the status of language. Because they are not productive in the sense that natural languages are productive, signed codes cannot be called languages. Yet, signed English does use fingerspelling, so I think manual codes and sign languages both need to be specified within the definition.
3. This definition does not mention the source language from which the concepts of letters and words come. In fact it seems to assume that sign languages inherently have letters and words. Not being a written language, Auslan would have no need for letters if it existed on its own. It is only through Auslan’s close contact with English that Auslan has adopted the concepts of letters, necessitating a way to represent them with ones’ hands (i.e. fingerspelling). The concept of “word” is also borrowed from English, as the equivalent in sign language is “sign”. Therefore reference to both the source language of the written/spoken letters and the target language of the equivalent signed letters is required within the definition.

I think Wikipedia is pretty close to the perfect definition:

Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands.

Elegant and complete! Thank you lay lexicographers of the interwebs!
Think I might write to the Macquarie people...