Tag: usage

Hello! This is LearnSigns.com lesson number 26. Twenty-Six.

In this lesson we are going to talk more about prepositions. In the last lesson I gave you a list of prepositions. This lesson will explain some of them in a little more detail.

First of all, let’s go through some of these again and look at what the right sign is for these.

IN

IN and OUT. OUTSIDE of. Those are pretty simple. Then IN is INTO. INSIDE.

WHILE, DURING or AS. I mentioned in the last lesson that WHILE, DURING and AS, these are words that talk about DURING this event, something else happened. So there may be other words besides those three that could use this sign. So try to think about what are the words meaning and then put the right sign to it. So WHILE, DURING or AS.

DURING the game last week someone got hurt. So, DURING. And this is WHILE something else is taking place.

And then we did SINCE. SINCE. You can also use this to mean UP TO NOW. From in the past TO NOW. Sometimes you will see it signed this way, where they will do SINCE and then come down to the Y signs. NOW, or NOW. You can do it either way. And this is UP TO NOW. From the past to today. Right now. SINCE or UP TO NOW.

ON, OVER, ABOVE, BELOW, BENEATH. We did those words.

WITH

WITH – This is the idea of two items. That can be two people or whatever. And it’s not just limited to two. It can be 15 items. So WITH. The idea is that it is a collection of things. Not just one thing. It will be two things together. Or, my car is WITH the MECHANIC. Or you can do MECHANIC. So it is not two things that are the same necessarily. It is just items that are together. WITH or TOGETHER.

Then, also this can be used to mean a boyfriend and girlfriend going out TOGETHER. You can do it back and forth like this. They are always WITH each other. Always TOGETHER. WITH, TOGETHER

WITHOUT

THROUGH

Now THROUGH has the idea of…of something is there and you are going to go THROUGH it. It can be metaphorical. I am going THROUGH a hard time right now. Or it can be physical. I am going to go THROUGH the door. Those…both of those are used. With sign language, typically, you are thinking of things that are real, physical things. But yet, you can also convey things that are not real. They are metaphorical. Or, they are simile, they are showing something that is not really real, like going THROUGH a hard time. Or this is…THROUGH this last week has been a great time for me. So you can use that THROUGH for those.

TO – I mentioned in the last lesson that this is movement from one place TO another place. You don’t use this for to eat, or to comb my hair. I guess I don’t do that anyway. But you don’t use this TO with your infinitive. And the infinitive is when you say a verb like to, whatever the verb is. To drive. You don’t use this sign TO for that. You just don’t use it at all. There is not a sign that you need to use for that construction. I want to GO… So I can say, I want to go and then I can say, TO the STORE. I WANT to DRIVE TO my FRIEND’S house. So to drive doesn’t use it, but going from here TO there does.

FROM

FROM

FOR

And then I also talked about the word OF. Those three words together. Many times the word OF means FROM. Or it means FOR. Or it can mean to REPRESENT. The word OF has many different meanings. So if you think of, this is the book OF John (we don’t say that so much in English), but that construction; book OF somebody. Then that is not FROM, it’s not FOR, it is BELONGS TO—and this is the sign BELONGS TO. You take two things and connect them together. You can say it belongs to John. OK, so the book OF John. It BELONGS to John. John’s book.

You can say, I am OF the state of Texas. FROM. Again, we don’t use that construction a whole lot, but that comes up. That is kind of an odd example. But, I am FROM, I am OF this world. FROM this world. So OF can mean FROM.

The Statue OF Liberty. What does OF mean there? You can say REPRESENTS. Or the Statue that SHOWS Liberty.

So the word OF, along with several other words, but that is one that has an easy example for us in the prepositions. The word OF has many different meanings and therefore you need to sign it based on the meaning. Not just O-F. You can say OF, but the meaning will be clearer if you will actually sign the sign that corresponds to that meaning. So try to think about that every time you hear the word OF, what does it mean? Then fit the sign for it.

And don’t just do that for the word OF. That is every word. Every word you hear…because sign language is not the same as English. It is a different language. And many times my spoken word corresponds to a sign that means that word, or what we would put together as a tag that says, OK this sign is that. But you need to think more, not just what the words say, but what do they mean and try to figure out every time you are listening to a word and you are interpreting or if you are just talking to you friends. You need to listen and think, what does this word mean? What is the base meaning for this word and sign that meaning?

So that is your word OF. It can mean FROM, BELONGS to, REPRESENTS, FOR. There are many many things that the word OF can mean there.

And then we talked about AROUND and ABOUT. Now this is also like you do it in English. You can talk ABOUT something AROUND physically: A camp fire. So you can say AROUND this way. But it is also used to talk ABOUT something. To talk AROUND a subject. To talk ABOUT this subject. So you can use AROUND and ABOUT that way.

And then the words UP and DOWN we covered in the last lesson. So this lesson is not so much new material on new signs and everything, but it gives a little bit more explanation of how to use those signs.

Every sign, and prepositions are good examples of this, every sign you need to think, what does this word mean? What does the spoken word mean that I am trying to convey and then convey that.

You also go the other direction. When a person is signing, they might sign something you say: Wow, I don’t know what the right English word for that is. Well, try to figure out what it means. What does the sign mean and then put the English word to it if necessary. Now, right now at your stage you are just trying to communicate and learn what people are saying and carry on conversations. But as time goes on and you get in the position of having to voice what your deaf friend is saying, then you want to be able to pull out what is the meaning of those signs and then put the English words to it. Because the English words may not correspond exactly with that particular sign, but it corresponds with the meaning of the sign.

Alright, so we call this…my friends and I when we are talking about this we say, think meaning. What does it mean? This is the sign for MEAN, by the way. Not MEAN as in ANGRY, but MEAN as in this word MEANS that. You take your V or your 2 and you poke it into your palm and then you give it a twist, you come off, twist it and poke it again. MEAN. So think MEANING. What does the word mean, and then sign that.

This is LearnSigns.com lesson 26. So you can go to LearnSigns.com/26 and get to this lesson.

I appreciate you watching. I know we had a couple of weeks there where there were not any videos. I was traveling. I am going to be doing some more traveling in the future. The format of the videos will probably change because of that. I won’t be at home for a few months. So if you see some changes there, bear with me. You probably like the changes, I don’t know. But the lessons will continue as much as I can over the transition time here. And then get back into a regular schedule as quickly as I can.

Thank you for watching.