In the event that a word using letters outside of the 26 (e.g ñ) in the English alphabet needs to be used in American Sign Language (ASL) and assuming there is not a 'sign' for the word. How is the situation handled?
Posted Dec 2, 2018, 1:30 AM UTC
34
Depends where you are but usually they will use the ñ from a Spanish oriented sign language like MSL
So if I'm understanding you correctly, someone using ASL would have to explain "this is the sign for ñ, it's used in this word, it comes from MSL"?
Basically in the same way that if I was in a Spanish class they would explain that ñ is a letter from the Spanish alphabet and it's used in words such as Piñata.
If the person being spoken to had never encountered it, yeah. In American communities where Spanish is common and deaf people are mainly using ASL instead of a sign language from a Spanish country most people using ASL will learn those extra letters at some point. And before then they probably have already encountered Spanish from street signs or names even if they don't speak or know Spanish so they will understand it is a letter but would probably reference its written form to understand which letter it is.
Awesome! Thank you for helping me to understand how it works.