WHY do I write my signs in capital letters!!?

Today's sign is WHY because I figured you might want to know by now WHY I write my 'Sign of the Day' in capital letters!

This is just one variation of the sign. I sign WHY differently.

American Sign Language is not a written language. Therefore when signs are in written format, it's referred to as 'gloss' because you are not translating the language - you're merely trying to write it down in written format. Gloss can even portray questions versus statements (as in what is being done with your body language and facial expressions).


It's important to note that ASL is not a word-order language, rather ASL is inflection (like some Asian languages). English on the other hand is word-order. The other important concept I'm always teaching in class is that ASL does not have a word-to-word correlation with Engish. Therefore, while many times you can ask 'what the sign for [fill in the blank word]?' - there are just as many times that there isn't a sign because signs are concepts (not necessarily words). 

For example, going through college years ago, I wanted to know the sign for 'corrupt' - at the time my friend said, "well explain it to me. WHY do you want the sign?" So I explained the story to her and she explained to me how to sign that concept. Ding Ding Ding - it was a light bulb moment - Right! There isn't a word-to-word correlation so of course there doesn't always have to be a 1:1 correlation.


So WHY do I write my signs in capital letters - now you know :) 

This is me and my rendition of WHY. Instead of moving my three
inner fingers down away from my head [like the image above], I only move / wiggle
my middle finger.Since it's a WH-question, technically you're supposed to have a slight tilt forward and
eyebrows in (so the eyebrows in is difficult when your husband's laughing at you during the picture).