stpatricksliveseyst

I have decided to add the note and the handouts I gave in Class

anyone who missed class one or is using the video as a guide to your own learning, I hope these are useful. 

Understanding Syntax

This is the most important thing you will learn.

BSL differs in sentence structure to English

Native English speakers.

One of the things that people struggle to understand when learning BSL is how the word ordering differs from English. 

EXAMPLE 1

Consider this sentence: - 

‘Why was the black cat climbing the tree in your garden yesterday?’. 

In BSL this would be as follows………

 ‘Yesterday your garden tree black cat climb why?’. In BSL, words are normally ordered as follows:

1. Timeline (yesterday)

2. Location (your garden)

3. Object (tree)

4. Subject (black cat)

5. Verb (climb) -  (the action, the doing bit of the sentence)

6. Question (why)

If you can learn these six words in correct order, you are on your way to learning BSL, because this is always the sentence structure used.

Words like…….

But, and, if, so, which in English we use as conjunctives to join words together to make the sentence flow, are not normally used in BSL.

The easiest way to remember this, is to think of BSL as a short cut.  You can remove all the unnecessary words that we use in English.  This works in BSL because it is a visual language, it relies not only on hand gestures but on body language and facial expressions.

Homework week 1

My name is ------------  ------------- and I am from  -----------------

You must practice this until you can sign it without thinking, or while you are saying something else!!  It is harder than it looks.

Also. Go to the web site where you will find things to practice.  Sentences will be signed with no voice over, see if you can work out what is being signed.

Stpatricksliveseyst.com

Click on Intro to BSL button at top of the page