Chapter 8
Learning to use
a sign language
85
It is easy for a young child to learn a complete sign language. A child will
first begin to understand the signs that others use, especially for people
and things that she sees every day. After she begins to use signs that are
important to her, she will learn and use many others.
Each sign will help your child learn more about the world around her.
As her language skills develop, she will begin to put signs
together. After a while she will be able to sign in full sentences. Drink?
This will also help her develop her mind. If you and your child
enjoy learning sign language together, you will get
better results.
The best way for you and your family to learn the sign
language used in your area is to have a deaf person
who uses it teach you. See Chapter 3 for guidelines
on how to teach your child language. See pages 103 and 150 for more
information on how deaf adults can help the community learn sign
language.
If there is no one who can teach sign language, there may be a book to
learn some signs to use with your child. But learning sign language from
a book is harder and less effective than learning from a person.
In this chapter, we show people using signs, and we also show how
signs can be put together to make sign sentences, like this:
One picture
by itself does
not show all of
the signs in a
sentence.
Say hello
to Papa.
hello
Papa
We
sometimes
show the
signs that
make up a
sentence in
boxes that
you read
from top to
bottom.