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Lakuse also goes by jan Lakuse, Lak, raacz, and Chelsea.

Status: Whispers over the campfire at night-time.

Log

Practice in the Hallway

February 7, 2026
Previous: San Jose Shopping Mall Meetup Next: Medical Signs and More at Burger King

This week's class was actually quite nice, despite it all.

Content Summary

There were three sections: Pets and Roommates, Expressing Needs, and Fingerspelling Down-Letters.

During the Pets and Roommates section, the instructor was showing us how grammar structure worked. She would alternate between formulations:

  1. FATHER DAUGHTER LIVE TOGETHER
  2. FATHER IX LIVE WITH DAUGHTER

And then we stumbled into this formation:

1 MAN 2 WOMAN ROOMMATE LIVE TOGETHER

And I asked whether it was necessary to specify gender, and whether we could sign '3 ROOMATE LIVE TOGETHER'

Her response? What 3 things are roommates? Say '3 PEOPLE ROOMATE LIVE TOGETHER.' You can't just say '3' are roommates. It could be three fruits, three books, three of what? Sign 'people.'

I responded, but isn't it obvious? When are books ever roommates?

She was like, just sign 'people.'

So this response seems to imply to me that the sign for 'Roommate' is actually a verb and doesn't function well as a head. I need to confirm this interpretation-- perhaps another day, I will ask if 'My roomate like blue flowers' is an acceptable sentence, and see if that works. If not, I don't know quite yet understand the reason for that difference in grammar.

During the express needs activity, our formula prescribed we do

I NEED [ITEM]. [LOCATION] where?

But when the instructor came around and asked for us to show her how we signed it, I kinda naturally did a topic-comment of ITEM I NEED. LOCATION WHERE?, which she corrected and I just did. But I did want to ask her why the topic comment version didn't work. Or perhaps it works, but we were just suppposed to practice the non-topicalized version. I'm unsure.

And finally came the fingerspelling activities. Oh boy. We had to copy down a crossword that the instructor signed spatially, and it was painful. SO many repetitions. People in my class were really struggling. It took forever. It was unpleasant.

Not the Content

In my first journal entry, I mentioned that "only one other student looked comfortable expressing a simple introduction using ASL alone." L and I swapped phone numbers on the second class, and this week she approached me and signed to me over the break. It was a breath of fresh air. We continued to sign after class as well. We could have signed for longer, but her dad was waiting for her in the parking lot.

It's good to get practice in. With the students I've worked with so far, I haven't managed to get in good practice. So it's good that L is here. She makes me look forward to class next week.

For the Spreadsheet

Notes

Vocab

Confirmed as Fingerspelt