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Perfect Phrases in American Sign Language for Beginners
Quick and easy phrases in ASL for daily life Perfect Phrases for American Sign Language provides 150 essential phrases for hearing-impaired users of ASL and those who interact with them. ASL expert Barbara Bernstein Fant--carrying on the work of her late husband Lou--and illustrator Betty Miller make it easy for you to pick up key signs for everyday communication without having to have prior knowledge of signing. This handy reference is perfect for comfortably and confidently communicating with loved ones, coworkers, patients, or anyone who uses ASL.
- GenresNonfictionReference
176 pages, Paperback
First published September 10, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 28, 2012
It is very helpful and the signs are easy to see! It is a great book for beginners.
March 18, 2019
Wouldn't necessarily describe this as "perfect", but it isn't a bad little handbook for those "need to know" phrases in any language. You could do worse than this if you needed to learn essential ASL very quickly. The pictures aren't very easy to follow and it seems to be divided up a bit strangely, but it's useful enough.
October 9, 2019
The drawings in this book aren’t very clear or easy to follow.
November 21, 2013
When I began using this book, I was really frustrated by it and didn't like it, but I'm glad I stuck with it because it turned out to be useful in some ways.
Initially, the book is somewhat off-putting in that the illustrations of the signs are difficult to interpret - the pictures are small, black-and-white line drawings, with the arrows drawn on top of that. Sometimes the hands are dashed to show the first part of the motion, or there are even little numbers to indicate the movement (from position 1 to 2 to 3, etc.). There are several signs where it's difficult-to-impossible to determine exactly what one is supposed to be doing, which is frustrating. Some of those signs I ended up looking up online or in other books for clarification.
However, this drawback is offset by the usefulness of the chosen phrases and grammar. The author did a really good job of picking the very first things you should learn to say if you are new to signing and need to find your way around in a Deaf environment. The chapters are arranged by topic, so you aren't left floundering about trying to pick the correct sign from a list of English homonyms.
Additionally, since it's a phrasebook, the phrases are shown in ASL grammar - no pidgin or English-y grammar here! There are so few books with in-depth information about ASL grammar that it's really nice to see all the examples for those of us who don't get as much real live interaction with the Deaf community as we'd like. The somewhat down side of the book being very ASL-y is that some of the signs shown are kind of like the lazy version (one-handed when it's more correct to use two hands, or shows a half-arc when it's more correct to do a full circle) - this could make it difficult for a beginner, but on the other hand it's what you're more likely to see in real life.
Initially, the book is somewhat off-putting in that the illustrations of the signs are difficult to interpret - the pictures are small, black-and-white line drawings, with the arrows drawn on top of that. Sometimes the hands are dashed to show the first part of the motion, or there are even little numbers to indicate the movement (from position 1 to 2 to 3, etc.). There are several signs where it's difficult-to-impossible to determine exactly what one is supposed to be doing, which is frustrating. Some of those signs I ended up looking up online or in other books for clarification.
However, this drawback is offset by the usefulness of the chosen phrases and grammar. The author did a really good job of picking the very first things you should learn to say if you are new to signing and need to find your way around in a Deaf environment. The chapters are arranged by topic, so you aren't left floundering about trying to pick the correct sign from a list of English homonyms.
Additionally, since it's a phrasebook, the phrases are shown in ASL grammar - no pidgin or English-y grammar here! There are so few books with in-depth information about ASL grammar that it's really nice to see all the examples for those of us who don't get as much real live interaction with the Deaf community as we'd like. The somewhat down side of the book being very ASL-y is that some of the signs shown are kind of like the lazy version (one-handed when it's more correct to use two hands, or shows a half-arc when it's more correct to do a full circle) - this could make it difficult for a beginner, but on the other hand it's what you're more likely to see in real life.
March 11, 2013
Skip the sign language dictionaries and go straight for this book if you are an ASL novice. The perfect book to get a quick working vocabulary for basic communicating with a deaf person who uses ASL.
January 7, 2015
There was good information in this book, but the illustrations just killed it for me. They were impossible to fully decipher, it was difficult to figure out what specific motions were, arrows were not drawn consistently. Not at all helpful, unfortunately.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews