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Hello Welcome to LearnSigns lesson 28.

In this lesson we are going to talk about superlatives. Superlatives are those words like BETTER, BEST. You’ve got your degrees. You have GOOD. And then the next degree up is BETTER. And then BEST. Now, in English sometimes these would be MORE GOOD. I know that we don’t say that. Or, MOST GOOD. We have GOOD, BETTER, BEST. But then some words do use the MORE and MOST. And then some will just use the -ER at the end of the word, or -EST. And so those are the types of words I am talking about here. Superlatives.

Now, let’s talk about MORE and MOST first and then we will talk about how to apply this. I am not going to go through all the possible superlatives, because you can use the principles here to build the superlatives that you need.

MORE and MOST are the two signs that you would use to get your -ER (your middle one). I forget what that is called. Some grammar person can let me know. And then your -EST. That is your MOST. Your superlative, the BEST one.

So, MORE, you already know that one. MORE. You take both of your hands, your kissy fingers and you put them together. MORE

MOST – There are a couple of different ways to do this. And it depends on how you are using this sign, or what the sign is that you are saying as to which one you use. But most of the time you will use this one. You will have your non-dominant hand, your subordinate hand, is going to stay stationary. And you are going to rub your dominant hand up the knuckles. So your knuckles are going to touch the knuckles.

MOST

MORE and MOST

Now, in GOOD, BETTER and BEST, there are … it has it’s own way of doing it. We know that GOOD is like this. And then BETTER is just straight across. BETTER. BEST – And this is, BETTER-EST. BETTER-MOST. Or you could say the MOST BETTER. Of course we would not say that in ENGLISH. You could say that in sign language. But it does have its own sign and that is BEST. So, GOOD, BETTER, and then BEST.

Now, BAD, WORSE and WORST are good examples of how you would do this the sign language way, the ASL way. And that would be BAD. You know that one. BAD. Now there is a sign for…you could say, MORE BAD. That would be WORSE. And then MOST BAD, you could do that. This is the sign for WORSE or WORST, both of them. WORSE is getting WORSE. Something was BAD before but now is getting WORSE. You could do that a couple of times to show that. And then WORST would be the WORST is just one time. It is the WORST it could be. WORST

Now you can use this MORE and MOST with other signs as well.

Let’s look at PRETTY or BEAUTIFUL. We could say BEAUTIFUL. BEAUTIFUL. And then MORE BEAUTIFUL. BEAUTIFUL-ER. MORE BEAUTIFUL is the way you would say it. And then MOST BEAUTIFUL. You do MOST BEAUTIFUL.

Now we don’t do that with PRETTY. We do PRETTY, PRETTIER and PRETTIEST. So you could do that as well. PRETTY. PRETTIER – You could do MORE PRETTY or PRETTY MORE. Most of the time you would do MORE PRETTY, PRETTIER. And the MOST PRETTY. PRETTIEST. PRETTIEST.

Ok, you see how those are used there?

Uh, let’s do to SMELL BAD. To STINK. Oh, it STINKS – STINKS. It is STINKIER. MORE STINKY than before. STINKIER. And then STINKIEST would be MOST STINKY. Oh, the STINKIEST, the WORST.

You’ve got SMART. SMART – Remember we did that one? SMART. Now you can do MORE SMART – SMARTER. And then MOST SMART. SMARTEST.

TALL, TALL. MORE TALL – TALLER. MOST TALL – TALLEST.

OLD. OLD – As in my OLDER brother. You could say, OLDER, MORE OLD, or OLD MORE. MORE OLD or OLD MORE. Either one of those work. And then OLDEST. OLDEST. OLD MOST. Or your can do MOST OLD. Either one of those is fine.

So you see how you can apply that to other words. Particularly, I guess adjectives are what you would use these with. And just apply your MORE and your MOST as necessary.

So let’s go through those again.

MORE

MOST

And then we have GOOD, BETTER, BEST.

Sometimes you will see people do MOST like this. That is fine. MOST

BAD BAD

WORSE – As in getting WORSE.

And then WORST. The WORST it can be.

Then BEAUTIFUL. BEAUTIFUL.

MORE BEAUTIFUL

MOST BEAUTIFUL

Same way with PRETTY, STINK, STINKIER, STINKIEST.

TALL

TALL – You could do TALLER. That would be MORE TALL. Or you could do TALL MORE. And then TALLEST. Or MOST TALL.

Same way with OLD, OLDER, OLDEST.

Ok? So you see how to use those? The superlatives are used with the helping verb…or the helping words MORE and MOST.

This is LearnSigns.com lesson 28. If you have any questions you can send me an email at david [at] learnsigns [dot] com, or you can leave a comment in the comment section below. Thanks for watching.

Hello! Welcome to LearnSigns.com lesson 27.

In the last couple of lessons we’ve talked about prepositions. In this lesson I want to talk about giving directions. And those kind of go hand in hand. Many of the prepositions that you’ve already learned will help you in giving directions. Now there are a couple of other signs that you are going to want to know for giving directions.

First of all is going to be your compass points. NORTH, SOUTH, EAST and WEST. Now when you are talking about the compass and giving directions in general, you are going to give it from your perspective. If you are the one giving directions then you talk from your perspective. We call this the signers perspective in directions.

So pretend that you are looking at a map. Then the top of the map is NORTH. SOUTH is the bottom of the map. EAST is the right side of the map. And WEST is the left side of the map. When you use the directions like that, NORTH and SOUTH are very simple.

Which side is EAST? Which side is WEST? Is it my side? Their side? EAST and WEST, again you should do it from your perspective. So WEST would be to your left and EAST would be to your right. However, that is not as critical. For example, if I said, imagine that you were in Kenya and you wanted to go to the EAST side of the country. Well, I could do EAST side, and that would be the opposite of what I just said: EAST side. But from then on I need to keep EAST one direction and WEST the other direction. The idea that you are saying EAST and WEST should clarify where you mean. So it is not as critical to keep those necessarily straight, but within that conversation it needs to stay consistent on your EAST and WEST.

So, NORTH, SOUTH, EAST and WEST.

Now you have BESIDE. You can do BESIDE. You are showing the object here and you are set off to a side of it.

IN FRONT OF, or AFTER is probably better to say AFTER. And then BEFORE. So I am the signer, I am the one talking about going to the place.

You see the tall bank building? Where you are going is AFTER. AFTER the tall bank. Or BEFORE the bank. And this is BESIDE.

Now, IN FRONT OF, you can do it this way. IN FRONT OF, you are showing in the PRESENCE of is really the sign there, but it can mean BEFORE (as in IN FRONT OF, not BEFORE as in BEFORE you get to the building).

And then you have BEHIND or BACK. The BACKSIDE of something. Or you can do BEHIND like this. You have your stationary object and you are going to go behind it. Or you go PAST it. Go PAST the tall bank building.

So those are some other signs that you’ll want to know when you give directions.

Now, when you do give directions, let’s say there are two different scenarios. One is that we’re physically in the location that we are talking about. I can tell you to go over there and turn LEFT. That is pretty simple. So if you are in the physical location then look for, really just showing the person with your signs. You have RIGHT and LEFT. You can do both of them with your right hand or both with your left hand. You do LEFT and RIGHT. But again, if I am going to tell you to go out that door over there and turn LEFT it will be from my perspective. Even if you are standing there looking at me in this direction, it’s still going to be to my LEFT as I am giving you directions. So always think about that. Think about it from your perspective. The one that is giving directions.

So that, if you were the one walking there and your friend later is going to walk there, then you are giving it from the perspective they would need to know as they walk there, or drive there.

Now if you are not physically in the location. For example it is going to be some place downtown. Way over there. Then what you want to do is start with a known location. A common landmark. And ask the person, OK do you know where this store is, or this building is? And then start from there giving your directions. And then you would say, you go up past the tall bank. You know where that is? Go past that. You are going to go past one block, two blocks. So you have side streets here. You are going to go one, two blocks. And you turn RIGHT. Turn RIGHT and go over there. So you can do turn RIGHT like this or your can do it with your classifier, with your car. You turn RIGHT or turn LEFT. And you can also say, go STRAIGHT. Go STRAIGHT.

So the big thing about giving directions in sign language—and this seems to be confusing for a lot of people—is that you always giving directions from your perspective. The one that is giving the signs. The one that is giving the directions. It is called signer’s perspective. So give it from the signer’s perspective.

And then just use your signs, like the prepositions you have learned in the last couple of lessons. The ones I have given you in this lesson to give a description of how to get somewhere. If you are physically in the location then you show from here how to get there. If you are talking about some location that is distant, then you find a common landmark and then you work from there to get there.

If you have any questions, if this doesn’t make sense, or you have other questions then leave a comment on the website: LearnSigns.com and this is lesson 27. So you can go to LearnSigns.com/27 to get to this lesson. Leave a comment there. Or you can write me at david [at] learnsigns [dot] com and I will be glad to answer any questions I can for you. Thank you for watching.