Many people assume English and American Sign Language share similar sentence structures. Although the two languages can, they sometimes do not. Since ASL is a visuospatial language, it prefers different structures than English.
As I tell my students, the internet is full of amazing resources, but you need to know where to look. There are some sites that are outdated, have not been updated in ages, or lack the information you need as a student.
The most common error I see students make when looking up signs, is not knowing how to look up the sign they need. In my dictionary, I provide definitions along with a link to the sign.
Understand, this dictionary is unfinished, there are several signs that I know students want or need, but they are not in this dictionary. At the same time, there are many words in English that do not have a direct ASL equivalent, this is true for all languages. Just because a sign in not in this dictionary does not mean it does not exist, instead you may need to think (1) what does this word mean in English? (2) Do I know enough signs to translate the meaning of the word? (3) What is another way I could say this? Does that make it easier to translate?
Remember, translation is not a word-for-word process, that is transliteration. You are translating the meaning, forget the word.
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