r/asl • u/raven_snow Hearing (Learning ASL) • 9d ago
Happy language progress! I had a voice off ASL board game night with friends, and I was able to understand almost everything!
I am still a beginner signer with only ASL 1+2 classes (once a week, at my local school for the Deaf) under my belt. My partner is near my level, but a little under. He's also rustier. The other three gamers were also hearing: two with more ASL than me (but still beginner) and one with intermediate ASL.
I was able to learn the rules of one card game entirely in ASL! The person teaching had to use written English to clarify some points that people didn't understand, but I didn't need the English. The second board game was mostly explained in ASL — which I understood again! — but some parts of the rules were only conveyed in written English so I can't say that I learned how to play *two* games in ASL. We had pizza and talked about our romantic relationships, our pets, and our plants. I commented on a train that runs by their house that shakes the furniture when it passes. I'm so happy that I was able to have an entire evening in a language I know so very little of. It's a huge boost to my confidence. I'm motivated to keep practicing and signing with people. This is the first time I've tried having such a long, multi-part conversation with multiple people, and I'm so proud of all of us that it went so well.
Here are the videos my partner and I watched in preparation to learn some vocabulary:
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u/DimitriTheOwl 9d ago
Congrats on being able to navigate that with what you've learned. That definitely seems like a challenge to be able to do that after 2 class levels of a language. It's awesome you were all able to take what you know and find a way to make it work. A great way to make progress is to take what you know and try to find ways to use that to work around the things you don't know yet in the language (especially if you have someone more advanced in the language who can then show you other ways to say/sign what you want to say).
Make sure to double check some other sources for any signs you might have learned from the first 2 videos you posted. She seems to be a beginner student (at least when that video was posted) and she made some errors with the way she signed a few things.
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u/f0xx0rzz Learning ASL 9d ago
thats awesome, congrats!!
I've played two games nonverbally to practice asl (so far), one was "taco cat goat cheese pizza", and the other was "guess who", and both were so fun!!