Growing up as a teenager, our next door neighbors had ten kids.
seven were deaf. Two were my best friends. Haven't seen them in years.
Anyway, I was at the store the other day, and helped a deaf couple solve a
problem. It took a while,my signs are so rusty. I googled it ,but didn't find
a good website to refresh my memory. Any suggestions?

Took it in High School and am super rusty. Have used it on occasion since but end up with lots of finger spelling.

I worked beside a guy who was deaf. I picked up some phrases over the years. Most of them was bad phrases. But I remember using these two sites.

https://www.lifeprint.com/
https://www.handspeak.com/

When I lost 50% of my hearing due to a tumor several years ago, my wife and I took a couple of classes at the local library. She is much more proficient at it than I am. I tend to remember signs that I feel are logical but tend to forget those that I don't. She on the other hand picks up those illogical signs readily.

Anyway, there is an app we use called Pocket Sign that we use to take daily lessons and refresh things.

As a cop, I went through a "Sign Language for Police" class. I did not use it enough to be proficient with it. I did get a 3X5 flip style book that was used to communicate with the deaf. If you have a school for the deaf near you, you might can get something similar.

You don't even need to know all the signs. You can make gestures,
They are not stupid. They understand. Watching TV, want to get their
attention, pound your foot on the floor a couple times to talk to them.

Good Golly I miss my old friends.

My parents were deaf, and they're gone now. I still have a book here with basic sign language instruction The Joy Of Signing . I no longer need the book for any friends or family here. If you'd like to use this, email me and I'll send it your way.

Be advised there have been changes over the years, as well as some regional or "dialect" differences. Don't let that discourage you, just adapt improvise and overcome .

I had to crash course learn Spanish years ago. What worked for me was to learn foundational rules of grammar and conjugation together with basic vocabulary. From there I read books in Spanish aloud to myself and moved to Mexico. Within 8 months I was street conversant. By 12 months I could teach my classes. By the time I left I was more comfortable with Spanish than English.

You could do the same. Sounds like you have a foundation. From there read and sign books to yourself. Words you don't know, you look up and sign. It will be slow going at first but it gets exponentially faster. Lastly hang around other signing people to learn to sign conversationally.

quote:

Originally posted by Schmelby:
Growing up as a teenager, our next door neighbors had ten kids.
seven were deaf. Two were my best friends. Haven't seen them in years.
Anyway, I was at the store the other day, and helped a deaf couple solve a
problem. It took a while,my signs are so rusty. I googled it ,but didn't find
a good website to refresh my memory. Any suggestions?

I've actually used the speech-to-text feature in Notes on my iPhone with some hard-of-hearing friends. Definitely need to work on my ASL.

quote:

Originally posted by preten2b:
My parents were deaf, and they're gone now. I still have a book here with basic sign language instruction The Joy Of Signing . I no longer need the book for any friends or family here. If you'd like to use this, email me and I'll send it your way.

Be advised there have been changes over the years, as well as some regional or "dialect" differences. Don't let that discourage you, just adapt improvise and overcome .

Thank you for the offer. Big Joes post should do just fine.

ASLpro.com is a good one as well.

ASL-American Sign Language
what rsbolo said

Several of us in junior high learned it so we could cheat on Geography tests. Worked like a charm and that old bitch never caught on. *s*

My best friend since 3 years old had both parents who where hard of hearing. None of the 4 siblings are hard or hearing.

With cell phones it's so much easier for them to communicate with their parents when not in person. They used to have a machine called a teletype growing up when another hard of hearing person would want to talk over the phone. The doorbell and telephones would flash the lights in a different pattern so they knew which one it was.

I never learned more than the basics since they were great at reading your lips.

Just yesterday, I braked hard and honked my horn when a young woman ran a stop sign right in front of me.

She "spoke" to me in sign language.