Category: Blog

When I first thought of naming my dictionary, I tried for a more poetic title than ASL Dictionary. Breaking the Sound Barrier was my first idea. A reference to how the visual language of ASL is free from the shackles of verbal communication and noise. My teacher was not impressed with that name which is good as that title belonged to another book. 2019 Breaking the Sound Barrier novel by Steve Smith and Gianfranco Conti, a book about language studies through trained listening.
I needed to step back to think of a better name. These cartoons began as doodles in my textbook. When I moved up to full colour illustrations, I was still drawing them for myself to help me with my ASL studies. These pictures were my own personal collection of ASL hand signs stored in a book. With my dictionary now a resource for other students learning, I named the book My ASL Dictionary in reference to its beginnings. A simple name fortunately not used by other titles in print or online.
When the Facebook page for my dictionary needed new cover art, I made a joke about a common question I heard about its title. After seeing the text in other ASL cartoons, I upgraded my character’s comments to be more educational by separating and enlarging the words shown in hand signs.

While working on the Shadow Pages for my ASL Dictionary, I discovered an ASL hand sign was missing, the word BILLION. The error might have occurred when the original B file was corrupted or a mistake on my part. In constructing a separate page for ASL Numbers, I moved the larger denominations from the central dictionary onto the numbers page. After transferring HUNDRED, THOUSAND, and MILLION to the page, there was no space left for BILLION. While this is an embarrassing error, it is fortunate that BILLION is such a rare number it is usually fingerspelled instead of signed.

After happily completing the second ASL word for BEFORE, I discovered to my shock the file for the letter B was corrupted and turned into an unknown format impossible to open! All ten pages of the 92 ASL words inside are locked away. Even though the work on my book is complete and in the hands of Tellwell Publishing, I will make another B file from scratch to keep the book’s files tidy. This crisis is yet another hurdle I’m pushing my Dell Computer through. Sigh, maybe this is why artists work with Apple instead.

The quickest way to lose a language is to stop your exposure. I have taken multiple classes in ASL now to regain the lessons I lost in the empty time between them. To keep a language requires more than just steady practice, you need to remain immersed in it and its culture. That was the message I wanted for my next ad. Already dressed for a deep dive, I took the ASL cartoon for Immerse and placed the character and her ASL tank underwater, surrounding her with floating pages of notes and the waving ASL hand sign for Fish with Goldfish inside the palms for fun.

With the Dictionary completed and in the hands of Tellwell Publishing, I decided to place all additional ASL hand signs inside the book’s advertisements. These two characters waiting outside a bookstore are texting the words they are signing, making the ad understandable and educational. My previous ads have had cartoon characters using sign language. Continuing with this pattern fits perfectly. It also allows me to continue my ASL studies with my cartoon illustrations. The students are wearing masks to illustrate the 2021 time period of a world still gripped by the Covid 19 pandemic. While stores were allowed to open, social distancing and wearing a mask was still mandatory. As the Pandemic started in January, even my ASL Dictionary has characters wearing that protective covering.. Continuing with this pattern fits perfectly. It also allows me to continue my ASL studies with my cartoon illustrations.

Like many first exposed to a new language, there is always a secret wish to quickly comprehend what takes time and effort to know. I thought it would be fun if someone used the Genie to wish for a new language instead of asking for riches and power. While finishing the ad, I realized my dictionary didn’t have the sign for MAGIC. As Aladdin has his fingers crossed in the ASL sign for HOPE, it made sense to have the Ginn grant the wish with the ASL sign for MAGIC. Both Flat O HS held slightly apart are thrust forward into a Contracted 5 HS. The sign mimics the Magical Puff of Smoke. The cartoon makes this hard to see with Aladdin in the way and not enough space to fully show off the hand sign, but MAGIC is still there. (Another hand sign for MAGIC found in the Canadian Dictionary of American Sign Language looks similar to the hand sign for MIRACLE, which is in my dictionary).

Beginning studies of any new language can be intimidating. To help illustrate this situation, I picked the visual comparison of learning to drive by placing a nervous crash test dummy in a car filled with ASL textbooks. In both these scenarios, the new student wants to succeed but fears making mistakes and crashing. I wanted to advertise my dictionary as a portable resource and a friendly alternative to stricter ASL studies. Later drafts of this ad might go into more detail about what the dictionary has to offer. Taking the book’s cover and the ASL hand sign for stop from the dictionary, I blended them with new original art. Drawing the inside of a car was my biggest challenge.

While looking at my earlier dictionary ad, Number Trouble, I noticed a minor mistake with the contestant’s hands. The Hearing usually count numbers on their fingers with the palm facing in, not out. Similar to how the deaf count in ASL from 1 to 5. In addition, the cartoon was still reliant on the viewer knowing the ASL signs for numbers. Then I remembered one of the easiest to understand hand signs of the manual alphabet, the letter W. A nice plus to this change was the correction made the answer to the 81/27 question even funnier.

 

With high school as an introduction, my serious education in American Sign Language began with the ASL classes in College and University. Deaf History was now part of the lessons as learning a new language also involves studying the history of the culture that created it. A single author did not create American Sign Language. ASL grew and developed with the deaf students and teaching staff of the first schools for the deaf, as the language continues to grow and evolve with the deaf culture that uses it now. If I wanted my dictionary to be a resource for ASL Study, it also had to include deaf history with the collection of ASL words. The introduction to my dictionary covers the basic history of American Sign Language in the United States and Canada. I collected a list of famous figures in Deaf History, researched and studied each one, then created short bios, highlighting their importance in deaf culture. Spread across the pages, I also placed the index listing of these bios on the Deaf History page with links to their location. The image for the page’s header is of the three catalysts to ASL creation, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Alice Cogswell, and Laurent Marie Clerc. I was also lucky enough to come across a brilliant quote from Bilingual researcher Colin Baker.

 

A good majority of print ASL Dictionaries are in black and white, so I made an ad highlighting the colour and cartoon illustrations that help set my dictionary apart from them. I felt the best way to display this was to have the book’s cover image as a black and white picture on the wall that turned into colour when the child touched it. I used multiple layers and experimentation to create this image that would also make an excellent poster.