Fingerspelling Facts for Kids

Fingerspelling in British Sign Language.

Fingerspelling is making an alphabet with your hands. Many deaf people learn fingerspelling. They use it when they want to sign a word but there is no sign in the sign language, or when they don't understand what the sign means. Other people also use fingerspelling to talk in secret, to help remember something, or to talk without making sound (for example in a church).

Fingerspelling is a part of some sign languages. Writing systems are not the same everywhere, and fingerspelling is also different. Different countries have different ways of fingerspelling. Some alphabets use one hand, some use two hands.

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Relationships between the manual alphabets of sign languages, expressed as a phylogenetic network
Ukrainian manual alphabet
1494 illustration of a finger alphabet and counting system originally described by Bede in 710. The Greek alphabet is represented, with three additional letters making a total of 27, by the first three columns of numbers. The first two columns are produced on the left hand, and the next two columns on the right. Luca Pacioli modified the finger alphabet to the form shown above, where the handshapes for 1 and 10 on the left hand correspond to the 100s and 1000s on the right.
A.
B, C, D.
E, F, G.
H, I, L.
M, N.
O, P, Q.
R, S, T.
V, X, Y, Z.
Alphabetic gestures have been discovered in hundreds of medieval and renaissance paintings. The above is from Fernando Gallego's retablo panels, 1480–1488, in Ciudad Rodrigo.
Plate from John Bulwer's 1648 publication Philocophus, or the Deaf and Dumbe Mans Friend (London).
American Manual Alphabet (1882). Letters are shown from a variety of orientations.
Antique hand memory system, three variants. Originally published in "Thesavrvs Artificiosae Memoriae", in Venice, 1579.

Fingerspelling facts for kids

Images for kids

See also