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W in Sign Language – Video & Image Included

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Lead Academy
4 Mins Read

Today we’ll learn the letter W in sign language. Since we’re discussing a letter, we’ll explain to you how the sign language alphabet differs from those of spoken language.

Differences within the families of sign language also exist. For example, W in ASL or American Sign Language differs from W in BSL or British Sign Language. ASL W requires a one-handed sign. That’s not the case with BSL, however. It requires us to use both hands.

For our case today, we’ll only deal with BSL for brevity’s sake.

But the interesting thing is that the number of hands has no correlation to the difficulty of a sign language, which is also true for BSL. In fact, learning the letter W is very easy as it’s a straightforward sign.

But before we begin, let’s introduce you to the concept of fingerspelling so you’ll have a bit more extensive understanding of today’s topic.

After that, we’ll move on to our main topic.

Fingerspelling

You may be familiar with the concepts of the sign language alphabet and fingerspelling if you are a member of the deaf community or have worked with deaf individuals.

Fingerspelling teaches you how to sign a letter. It is made up of a sequence of hand motions that are used to spell words or individual letters. The alphabet W is directly connected with this concept.

Much like how we spell the letter W in spoken languages, sign languages also spell it out with hand gestures. When we learn the letter W, we have to learn its associated gestures so we can use them later to spell out things like the names of people, as they don’t have any specific signs associated with them.

Fingerspelling is a very important part of sign language. Their versatility makes them very useful for communication.

However, remember as we said earlier that BSL is a two-handed sign language. That implies you’ll be communicating with both hands. Your dominant hand is in charge of the key gestures while your other hand, which is your non-dominant hand, assist with supporting gestures. We also refer to the non-dominant hand as the base hand. When signing, never switch your dominant hand mid-sign. If you do this, your words will lose any meaning.

So, let’s move on to how to write the letter W in BSL.

W in Sign Language Alphabet

What is W in sign language?

As we’ve mentioned earlier, letter W signs differ from sign language to sign language. However, this blog will only discuss W alphabet in BSL.

We have an entire video on how to do W sign with fingers. Please watch it first.

Now, please proceed with the instructions we have given below.

1. Start with a normal posture.

BSL interpreter with both of hands raised to the chest.

2. Raise both of your hands to your chest.

BSL tutor with interlocked the fingers of both the hands

3. Interlock the fingers of both your hands, like in the image above. They’ll interlock at a cross while pointing diagonally.

4. Pronounce the letter while doing the sign.

Check out how long does it take to learn BSL, by reading this informative blog.

Conclusion

So, that’s how we sign W in British Sign Language. Another thing to remember is to always have a gorgeous smile on your face. Smiles allow people to connect more easily. Smiles have the same effect on every type of discussion, even if you’re not communicating audibly. Nonverbal communication, like sign language, is no exception to this.

Check that the person with whom you are speaking can plainly see you. Anyone may easily misinterpret the message if the signer’s motions are not evident. They could even view it as insulting. This is especially true for two-handed sign languages like BSL. So be cautious in this regard. Furthermore, if you want to learn the sign, you must practice it on a regular basis; otherwise, you risk losing it from your memory over time.

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