🤟 National ASL Day 2024 – Apr 15

🤟 National ASL Day ORIGIN & HISTORY

National ASL Day is celebrated on the 15th Day in April.

In 1817 the United States established its first school for ASL in Hartford Connecticut. Sign Language originally came from a blend of Native American Sign Language, French Sign Language, and Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language. At the time English speaking sign language came about through gestures and postures to supplement English spoken words.

BENEFITS of ASL

American Sign Language is predominantly used to help deaf and hard-of-hearing people communicate. On average between 250,000 to 500,000 use ASL to communicate in Canada and the United States. Many people in public settings can benefit from the knowledge of ASL. Places such as hospitals, courts, and government agencies under the law ADA must provide ways to communicate with hard of hearing and deaf populations.

Other people such as first responders, teachers, advisors, administrators, doctors, specialists, and therapists including law enforcement should know ASL or how to communicate with the deaf community.

While knowledge of ASL isn’t required under law for everyone in public areas, studying or learning ASL can help foster acceptance for those without the ability to hear or those with hearing loss.

ASL is adaptable to help others to be able to speak with others that use sign language throughout the world. Many people don’t have an actual ability to use their voice but ASL allows people to communicate. ASL is a visual and gestural way for non-speakers, hard of hearing, deaf people, and their families to communicate other than lip speaking or reading. ASL however is not a replacement for words spoken in the English language but it is its own language with grammar and semantics.

Over time learning and communication of sign language have evolved. Communication in large with deaf people and in schools with deaf students and teachers has been exclusive to the deaf community.

People such as Alexander Graham Bell thought that this exclusiveness would greatly impact the community of deaf and hard of hearing people not being able to use oral speech. This impact would limit the community to not being able to converse with others in mainstream society. This would impact the overall development of the deaf and hard of hearing people beyond their disability with lack of hearing but have an overall impact on intellectual development.

The bilingual and bicultural approach to teaching ASL is debated both privately and publicly in the mainstream. Medical advances have come out to restore hearing loss but are also controversial. At this time ASL is the preferred language of communication for those with hearing impairments.

🧏‍♀️ HOW to Celebrate & Observe National ASL Day?

Not sure how to LOVE the day? We’ve got a few interesting ideas to consider that may help get you started.

Here are some activities that you can do on National ASL Day!

💙 LEARN the art of ASL

Whether or not you actually know someone who can’t hear or even has a hard time hearing, it’s good to learn something new. Are you up to the challenge of learning a new language? And while you’re at it, learning braille is cool too.

💙 HELP out someone DEAF

Find a local school for the deaf and ask if you can volunteer with the students now that you’re proficient in American Sign Language. Not yet … too soon? Well first build up your vocabulary with common and useful phrases. Do the same with braille. You might make someone’s day in your apartment building!

💙 CELEBRATE ASL style

Perform a poem at your local deaf club in ASL. Host a local potluck or party with the signing community. Create ASL Day cards for your friends, family, and neighbors. Make artwork celebrating ASL and ask if you can post it in your favorite shops.

💙 RAISE Social Awareness

Use social media posts with the hashtags #NationalASLDay, #ASLDay, #SignLanguage, #Deaf,  #CategoryHolidays, #MonthHolidays, #Holiday, #FindADayToLOVE, #iHEARTdays to support the importance of celebrating, promoting, and sharing with the world why you ❤️ National ASL Day.

LEARN more about the importance of SIGN LANGUAGE

LEARN THE ANIMALS IN ASL FOR KIDS

HEAR THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ASL

ELEVEN Key Facts you never knew about National ASL Day

1. The phrase “I Love You” in ASL is the combination of signs for the letters I, L, and Y.
2. ASL is a visual language that uses a combination of hand gestures, facial expressions, and body movements to convey meaning. It’s not just about the hands!
3. American Sign Language is not a universal language. Just like spoken languages, there are different sign languages used in different countries and regions around the world.
4. ASL is considered a foreign language with its own unique grammar/syntax rules, style, facial expressions, gestures/body language, and different sentence/word order.
5. There are many different sign languages used around the world, including British Sign Language (BSL), Auslan (Australian Sign Language), and Japanese Sign Language, just to name a few.
6. American Sign Language hails from France and is closely related to French Sign Language (LSF).
7. Over 125,000 adults in the UK use British Sign Language.
8. The sign language alphabet is also called fingerspelling. It’s a way of spelling out words letter by letter using hand gestures. Fingerspelling is an important tool for communicating proper nouns, like names of people and places, that don’t have their own specific sign.
9. The most popular languages in the US are English, Spanish, Chinese, and ASL.
10. The deaf do not clap; instead, they wiggle their hands up in the air after a performance or a show is performed.
11. ASL and SEE (Signed English) are different. SEE came out of ASL, but it modifies ASL handshapes into the first letter of the English word it represents thus visually representing spoken English.

Famous PEOPLE also born on April 15th

• Leonardo da Vinci

  Italian painter, sculptor, scientist, and visionary who was the Father of the Italian Renaissance and best known for his inventions and designs. These included flying machines, a tank, concentrated solar power, an adding machine, the double ship hull, and a theory on plate tectonics. Being ambidextrous was an understatement, da Vinci could draw going forward with one hand and then write backward with the other hand making mirror-image penmanship that was hard for people to read. Leonardo took about 10 years just to paint the Mona Lisa’s lips. He also invented a hydraulic pump and built a movable bridge for the Duke of Milan. Born Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci in 1452.

  LEONARDO DA VINCI Quote

  “A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.”

• Corrie ten Boom

  Dutch watchmaker, author, and Holocaust survivor best known for writing “The Hiding Place” and concealing Jewish people from the Nazis in her home during WWII. Learn more about Corrie and her sister Betsie. Born 1892.

  CORRIE TEN BOOM Quote

  “Let God’s promises shine on your problems.”

• Hans Conried

  American actor best known for his second career as a voice actor for cartoons such as Rocky and Bullwinkle, Woody Woodpecker, and as the voice of Captain Hook in Peter Pan. Born 1917.

  HANS CONRIED Quote as CAPT HOOK

  “Lie? Me? Never. The TRUTH is far too much fun.”

Future DATES for National ASL Day

🤙 ASL FAQ

What percentage of ASL comes from LSF?

• Roughly 60% of ASL’s lexicon comes from the early 19th century French Sign Language or “Langue des Signes Francaise” (LSF).

What is HEART in ASL?

• There are many ways but a standard way would be to poke your chest twice with the tip of your middle finger where the finger is bent at the large knuckle of a FIVE symbol.

What is SWEETHEART in ASL?

• The sign for sweetheart has modified “A” hands held over the heart where the thumbs are extended and you bring the thumbs down, up, and then down again.

The Imp💜rtance of National ASL Day

American Sign Language is important because it allows people that are deaf or hearing impaired to be able to communicate. If you’ve ever been to a public event and have watched an ASL interpreter express the art of signing, it’s quite beautiful.

The ASL language and people that are disabled with hearing loss find they communicate with other deaf people similarly to people that are also hard of hearing. It’s kind of like sharing a common nationality. They’re comforted by having others that speak ASL to them. It’s important for hearing-impaired people to communicate with others in public.

ASL is important to the hard of hearing in their private lives and in their outside community and environment. American disability laws protect hearing-impaired people by allowing access to language accommodation in society. Perhaps if you work in a public setting you could take the time to learn ASL. The more people can communicate with the deaf, the less stress of interacting with others in the world there would be.  Not being able to converse with others affects their overall quality of life.

Knowledge of ASL is both important and loved because it allows disabled people with hearing loss to communicate. Maybe you could learn how to sign something like can I help you?, what is your name?, my name is … can I be your friend?

Can You Sign?