Hello, How Are You, My Name Is
sooo. we've spent a good chunk of this class on faces and slowness and the alphabet, and some of you have been patient about it but i can tell a few of you are itching for something you can actually use walking into a room. today's that lesson.
this is the stuff. hello, how are you, my name is. the actual doorway signs. if you only ever learned these four things and nothing else from this whole class, you'd be able to walk up to somebody and start a real conversation instead of just standing there smiling like a golden retriever.
hello
easy one. flat hand, touch your forehead area near your eyebrow, like a little salute, and move it out and away. that's it. don't overthink the height — i've seen people practically saluting like a soldier and it doesn't need to be that formal. relaxed. a little casual flick.
how are you
three parts, but they flow together once you've done it a dozen times.
first, "how" — both hands, bent, knuckles together, roll them forward and up so your palms end up facing up. kind of a "what's going on" gesture if you think about it, which helps me remember it honestly.
then "you" — point at the person. just point. i know pointing feels rude because we all got told not to point growing up, but in sign, pointing is just grammar. it's not attitude. it's the whole point (no pun intended, okay it was a little intended).
put those together — how, you — and add the eyebrows up, head tilted slightly forward. remember lesson one, your face is grammar. this whole phrase is basically dead in the water without the eyebrows. you can do the handshapes perfect and if your face is flat, it reads like you're reciting a phone number, not asking a real question.
my name is
flat hand, palm down, tap your chest twice, that's "my." then "name" — two fingers on each hand, like an H shape, tap them together twice, horizontal, one on top of the other. then you fingerspell your name — slow, remember, from a couple lessons back — or just sign it if you've got a name sign, which most of you don't yet and that's fine, that comes later and usually somebody else gives it to you anyway, you don't pick your own.
and here's where i've gotta tell on myself
so a while back i mixed up "fine" with something a lot less appropriate right in front of my mom. teri. sixty-three years old, sitting in my living room, and i went to sign "i'm doing fine" and got the handshape wrong and the location wrong at the same time, which is a bad combo, and signed something that was decidedly not fine. i had to explain what i actually meant at full volume like we were at a family reunion instead of just her living room. she still brings it up.
the reason i tell you that story isn't to make you scared. it's to make you okay with it happening. handshape matters. location matters. you will get one of those wrong at some point, probably in front of somebody, and the sign will land somewhere you didn't intend. that's not a sign you're bad at this. that's just what learning a language looks like when you're doing it in front of real people instead of a screen.
practical stuff to actually do this week
- stand in front of a mirror and run hello, how are you, my name is, back to back, three times. slow. don't chase speed yet.
- practice on somebody in your house even if they think it's dumb. toni still gives me a look sometimes and I do it anyway.
- if you've got a partner from last week's pairing exercise, text them, get five minutes on a call or in person and just run the greeting both directions. you say it, they say it back, swap who's "starting."
- watch your face in that mirror rep specifically for the "how are you" part. eyebrows up, real question look. if you feel silly doing it, that's usually a sign you're doing it right — feeling silly is kind of the toll booth on this whole thing.
one caution, not a big one, just a heads up: when you're tapping your chest for "my," you don't need to whack yourself. i've seen beginners get so committed they're basically slapping themselves. two light taps. it's a sentence, not a workout.
my opinion here, and i'll say it plain: useful before impressive, every time. you don't need this to be beautiful yet. you need it to work. i'd rather you fumble through an honest "how are you" with a real person than nail some fancy sign you saw on an app and never use it because you're scared to mess it up in front of somebody. slow and useful beats fast and pretty, every single time i've watched a beginner learn this stuff.
before next time
pick one person this week — a neighbor, a cashier, your kid, doesn't matter — and actually go through hello, how are you, my name is, out loud in your head at least, even if you don't say it to their face yet. get the sequence living in your hands before we build on it next lesson.
~terry