Braille and Sign Language Basics

Cards · 50

ASL: Fingerspelling

Using manual alphabet handshapes letter-by-letter to spell out proper nouns, technical terms, or words lacking dedicated signs.

ASL: Non-Manual Markers (NMMs)

Facial expressions, head tilts, and body shifts that alter grammar, indicate question types, and convey tone or intensity.

ASL: Classifiers

Designated handshapes that represent categories of nouns, showing size, shape, location, or movement in space.

ASL: Directional Verbs

Verbs like give, help, or tell that change their movement trajectory to indicate the subject and direct/indirect object.

ASL: Sign Space

The physical area from the waist to the top of the head used to establish referents, timelines, and spatial relationships.

ASL: Spatial Referencing (Indexing)

Pointing to specific physical locations in front of the signer to establish pronouns or refer back to previously mentioned nouns.

ASL: Topic-Comment Structure

A grammatical order where the main topic is introduced first with raised eyebrows, followed by the statement or question about it.

ASL: Eyebrows Up (Yes/No Question)

Raised eyebrows, widened eyes, and a slight forward head tilt signaling that a question expects a yes or no answer.

ASL: Eyebrows Furrowed (Wh- Question)

Lowered, furrowed eyebrows and head tilt indicating a content question such as who, what, where, when, or why.

ASL: Rhetorical Question Marker

Raised eyebrows briefly used mid-sentence by the speaker to emphasize a point before answering their own question.

ASL: Temporal Aspect

Modifying the repetition, speed, or rhythm of a verb sign to show ongoing, repeated, or habitual action.

ASL: Lexicalized Fingerspelling

Fingerspelled words transformed through rapid flow, dropped letters, or unique movement into standalone single signs.

ASL: Two-Handed Symmetry Condition

A phonological rule stating that if both hands move independently, they must share the same handshape and movement pattern.

ASL: Base Hand (Dominance Condition)

A rule stating that in asymmetrical signs, the dominant hand executes movement while the passive hand stays stationary.

ASL: Timeline (Past vs. Future)

An imaginary axis running front-to-back across the shoulder, where forward signs indicate the future and backward signs indicate the past.

ASL: Eye Gaze Shift

Directing the eyes toward a specific point in signing space or character role to clarify perspective or object focus.

ASL: Role Shifting (Body Shift)

Turning the torso and changing facial expressions slightly to depict direct dialogue or actions of another person.

ASL: Compound Signs

Combining two individual root signs into a fluid, unified single concept, such as combining think and marry to mean believe.

ASL: Agent Marker

A suffix sign indicating an individual who performs an action, transforming verbs into professions or personas (e.g., teach to teacher).

ASL: Sign Assimilation

The phonological smoothing where a sign's handshape or location shifts naturally to match adjacent signs in fast discourse.

ASL: Mouthing (Mouth Morphemes)

Specific silent mouth shapes like 'cha' (large) or 'mm' (effortless) that serve as adverbs modifying signed adjectives or verbs.

ASL: Visual Turn-Taking

Conversational conventions like holding a final sign, averting eye gaze, or dropping hands to yield or claim the floor.

ASL: Name Signs

Culturally bestowed unique signs identifying an individual, typically incorporating an initial or descriptive physical trait.

ASL: Home Signs

Idiosyncratic gestural communication systems created naturally within families who lack formal access to sign language.

ASL: Contact Sign (PSE)

A communication variety blending ASL vocabulary with English grammatical word order, common among late-deafened learners.

Braille: Grade 1 (Uncontracted)

A character-by-character transcription of text where every letter, numeral, and punctuation mark is rendered individually.

Braille: Grade 2 (Contracted)

A compressed format using abbreviations, ligatures, and single-cell symbols to increase reading speed and reduce document bulk.

Braille: Alphabetic Wordsign

A single isolated letter cell representing a common whole word, such as 'b' representing 'but' or 'c' representing 'can'.

Braille: Strong Contraction (and, for, of, the, with)

Full-cell six-dot patterns that represent frequent grammatical function words or letter sequences across syllables.

Braille: Strong Word Contractions (ch, sh, th, wh, ou, st)

Single-cell symbols that stand for consonant and vowel digraphs, functioning as both letter clusters and standalone words.

Braille: Lower Wordsign

A contraction formed entirely within dots 2, 3, 5, and 6 that stands for a whole word (such as 'be', 'in', or 'enough') when standing alone.

Braille: Lower Groupsign

A bottom-half cell pattern used only as part of a larger word to represent letter combinations like 'ea', 'bb', 'cc', or 'en'.

Braille: Initial-Letter Contraction

A two-cell symbol combining a prefix indicator (like dot 5 or dots 4-5) with a letter to represent words like 'day' or 'here'.

Braille: Final-Letter Groupsign

A two-cell contraction ending with a specific base letter to abbreviate common endings like '-tion', '-ness', or '-ment'.

Braille: Shortform Words

Specially abbreviated two-to-four letter spellings for common multisyllabic words, such as 'ab' for 'about' or 'll' for 'little'.

Braille: Capital Indicator (Dot 6)

A single dot 6 placed immediately before a letter cell to mark it as uppercase; repeated twice to capitalize an entire word.

Braille: Number Indicator (Dots 3-4-5-6)

A prefix placed before the letters 'a' through 'j' to alter their meaning into digits '1' through '0'.

Braille: Grade 1 Indicator (Dots 5-6)

A prefix preventing adjacent cells from being read as contractions, forcing the reader to interpret them as literal individual letters.

Braille: Standing Alone Rule

A rule determining whether a contraction represents an independent word based on whether it is bordered by spaces or punctuation.

Braille: Prefix Contractions (dis-, con-, com-)

Specific abbreviated cells that may only be used when occurring at the very beginning of a written word.

Braille: Suffix Contraction -ing

Dots 3-4-6 used primarily to compress the progressive verbal suffix '-ing' within or at the end of words.

Braille: Suffix Contraction -ble

Dots 3-4-5-6 used within words to represent the adjectival suffix letters 'ble', distinct from its role as a number indicator.

Braille: Braille Cell Structure

A standard 2x3 matrix of six tactile dots numbered 1 through 6, forming up to 64 possible characters including a space.

Braille: Nemeth Code

A specialized tactile braille notation system developed explicitly for rendering advanced mathematics and scientific equations.

Braille: Music Braille

An international system using standard six-dot cells to represent musical pitch, octave marks, duration, and dynamics tactilely.

Tactile Sign Language (Hand-over-Hand)

A communication method used by DeafBlind individuals who place their hands over a signer's hands to perceive movements and shapes.

Pro-Tactile ASL

A tactile communication system developed by DeafBlind individuals using direct touch, pressure, and body taps to convey social feedback.

Tadoma Method

A tactile lipreading technique where a DeafBlind user places fingers on a speaker's jaw, lips, and throat to perceive speech vibrations.

Visual Phonics

A system of 46 distinct hand cues and movements paired with spoken sounds to teach phonemic awareness to deaf readers.

Cued Speech

A visual communication mode that uses eight handshapes in four face placements to disambiguate identical-looking spoken phonemes.