ASL Grammar: Theoretical ASL vs Common ASL 

This video was so illuminating!! As an ASL student, I frequently notice that what I’m being taught in class doesn’t necessarily fully align with what I see when I sign with Deaf buddies. I wondered if maybe my friends were catering to me as a native English speaker, but now some of the nuance is a little more clear.

THANK YOU Garrett for this MUCH NEEDED clarification between theoretical ASL vs Common ASL. As an ASL Master Tutor/Mentor/ASL Lab instructor - ASL students constantly got confused of what they learned in class. My coworker shared your video and I'm so grateful. I will be sharing your important video to everyone I know. Cheers!

This is amazing. I live outside the US and am studying ASL online, so I have limited resources, but actually asked an online deaf friend to take a look at one of your videos a couple of months back as I wondering this exact question. This was really helpful in giving me perspective. I love your videos, keep them coming!

Thank you so much for this outstanding and clear set of comparisons of theoretical ASL to common ASL! Your video is refreshing! All languages are constantly in flux, around the world, and languages in close contact tend to "borrow" some features from one another. This doesn't change the fact that they are still different languages. For language students learning another language can be confusing when what is taught in class doesn't line up with what they experience in daily life. The examples you offer, such as the influence of initialization on some signs, appear often in daily life. We need to be aware of these things and accept that each person may sign differently, and different situations may call for different language styles. There isn't necessarily "one right way" to compose language utterances. As multilingual people, we are wise to pick up on and affirm variations.

Love your videos! Never think you’re not making a difference, my asl teacher shows your videos to all her students in class. I wouldn’t know where else to go to learn in depth asl grammar!

Great content and I loved how you split the screen to show the differences in sentences. Thanks 🙏

So helpful... So many different messages from different people, and you've clarified some important bits of confusion for me. Thanks.

Outstanding.. Keep producing videos!! Thank you for putting in effort here!!

Thank you for this video. It makes so much sense now. I am an ASL interpreter. I tend to sign more Common ASL. Would you say this is why my EIPA scores don't end up high? This sounds like EIPA graders are looking for Theoretical ASL instead of Common ASL.

Video very clear. Interesting. It helps more clear what is the difference and for me to teach appropriately.

excellent. I like your work very much! thank you

Thank you! This is very helpful.

I love the way you sign, just something about it is really nice. haha :)

Very informative!

Thank you

Question: do you know if there are ways to modify ASL for people who have/can only use one hand or people who have limited range of motion in their hands ?

Question: when the adjective follows the noun in common ASL, would you consider this to be a relative clause-type structure?

Great video... I'm a little confused, which one is real-life ASL? Common or Theoretical?

This is what I teach my students: 1. Time, 2. Topic, 3. Description, 4. Verb/Action, 5. Questions/Negations. :-) SVO or OSV doesn't always work.

I think this video is very enlightening but fails to recognize how theoretical asl is still very commonly used by older deaf and hard of hearing members of the community

As a person who is not deaf who does not know ASL... I was told they do not have words like "got". lol which was funny and I was like... "ill-gotten gains" lol. forgotten, begotten lol got milk, The Beatles "Oh I Have Got". lol It was the 1980 an the Cold War was going on and I never forgot the time I told them they might as well be speaking f'ing Russian then lol I was being so sarcastic. All the blind people on the bus laughed. Either they don't have some common words or they were just taught to not use them either way it was odd. I was debating how they would say stuff. It was bad telling them they might as well be speaking Russian, but it was something I still remember probably partly because of that, we also joked about drunk men holding a beer and going on about commie bastards, it was a wonder we even won the war at all. lol

I like your videos. Thank you for sharing. I'd like to talk to you in private. I'm Deaf and I'm from Mexico but i live in Houston, Tx. Greetings

Deaf will not become pets of the ASL purity people.