Hello All!

This week for our signing video I decided to change it up and do my best attempt at an ASL cover of “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana. This is very different from the other videos that I do in many ways. The most evident is that I am signing in real time and in ASL.

I am usually focusing my energy on signed English which is signing the sign for each word within an English sentence structure. So you might be wondering… then what is ASL? ASL or American Sign Language is its own language, which means that it operates under its own sentence and lingual structure.

In ASL you may sign only a few words in an entire sentence. But where they don’t use as many words they make up for in visual elements. You can see in the video below that I create a place where the ocean is in my visual field and I use it as a frame of reference and to develop the story. So the following lyrics…

Every road I take

Every trail I track

Every path I make

Every road leads back

 

Becomes

Road/path (gesturing to ocean)

Walk (gesturing to ocean)

Road/path (gesturing to ocean)

Go (gesturing to ocean)

 

It may be simplified in word count but the content and imagery is vivid in ASL and in many ways I think it is a more comprehensive and expressive language than any other.