Sign Language Alphabet (ASL Fingerspelling Chart)

ASL is a language, not a code for English

American Sign Language has its own grammar, word order, morphology and idioms, none of which come from English. Grammatical information that English carries in word endings and function words is carried in ASL by facial expression, by the space in front of the signer, by the speed and path of a movement, and by the direction a verb points. Raised eyebrows can turn a statement into a question. Where you place a person in the signing space determines what the pronouns mean for the rest of the conversation.

This means ASL is not mutually intelligible with English and cannot be written down word for word in English. It also means ASL is not universal. British Sign Language, Auslan, Langue des Signes Française, Japanese Sign Language and dozens of others are separate languages. ASL and BSL are not related and their users cannot understand each other, despite both countries speaking English.

Signed Exact English is a different thing again: a manual code that maps English words and grammar onto signs, used mostly in some educational settings. It is a tool, not a language, and it is not what Deaf communities use among themselves.

What fingerspelling is actually for

Fingerspelling is a small part of ASL, not the whole of it. Signers fingerspell when there is no sign for what they need: proper names of people and places, brand names, technical vocabulary, titles, and the occasional English word being quoted directly.

Everything else has a sign. Nobody spells out H-O-U-S-E, because there is a sign for house. Learning only the alphabet and then spelling English sentences letter by letter is slow, unreadable, and a common beginner mistake.

Fluent fingerspelling is read as a shape and rhythm rather than letter by letter, which is why it looks impossibly fast to a learner. A few things make it easier to read and to produce.

• Keep your hand still in one comfortable place near your shoulder. Do not bounce or drift with each letter.
• Let the letters flow into each other rather than punching each one out.
• Pause briefly between separate words instead of adding a gesture for the space.
• Double letters are shown with a small bounce or slide, not by signing the letter twice from scratch.
• Mouth the word as you spell it. This is normal and it helps enormously.
• When reading, watch the whole hand and the signer's face, not the individual fingers.

BSL uses a two-handed alphabet

The most common surprise for people searching for a sign language alphabet is that there is more than one. ASL fingerspelling uses a single hand. British Sign Language, along with Auslan in Australia and New Zealand Sign Language, uses a two-handed manual alphabet where the dominant hand touches the fingers of the other hand.

In BSL the five vowels are the simplest to learn: the dominant index finger points at each fingertip of the flat other hand, starting with the thumb for A, index for E, middle for I, ring for O and little finger for U. The consonants use a variety of two-handed contacts and shapes.

Irish Sign Language uses a one-handed alphabet but is a different language from both ASL and BSL. So the alphabet on this page is specifically the American one, and it is worth checking which sign language you actually need before you learn any alphabet at all.

Why there is no Unicode block for ASL letters

Unicode encodes written scripts. Sign languages have historically been face to face and video-recorded rather than written, so there has never been a body of everyday written sign language for Unicode to encode, in the way there is for Latin, Arabic or Devanagari.

There is also a technical problem. A sign is not a single symbol. It is a handshape, plus an orientation, plus a location on or near the body, plus a movement, plus a facial expression, often with two hands doing different things at once. Encoding that faithfully needs a two dimensional notation, not a linear string of characters.

Writing systems for sign language do exist. SignWriting, developed by Valerie Sutton from a dance notation system, is the most established: it uses visual symbols arranged in a two dimensional block for each sign. Its symbol set, the Sutton SignWriting block, was added to Unicode 8.0 in 2015 at U+1D800 to U+1DAAF, but the characters are notation components rather than letters, they need specialised layout software to arrange properly, and font support is close to nonexistent in ordinary applications. HamNoSys and the Stokoe notation are other systems, used mainly in linguistics research.

So the practical position today is that ASL is recorded on video, described in words, or written in glosses (ASL words spelled in capital English letters, like ME NAME M-A-R-Y). None of those are a Unicode script, and none of them are a substitute for the language itself.

Hand emoji, and the ones people get wrong

The characters in the grid above are the hand related symbols that actually exist in Unicode. Most are emoji added between 2010 and 2016, plus a handful of older typographic marks such as the pointing hands (manicules) that printers have used since the Middle Ages.

Two are worth being careful with. The love-you gesture emoji is genuinely the ASL sign for I love you, a combination of the letters I, L and Y in one handshape, and using it that way is accurate. The sign of the horns is a different handshape entirely, with the thumb tucked in, and means rock on. People mix them up constantly.

Most hand emoji also have skin tone variants using the Fitzpatrick modifier characters, which combine with the base emoji. Some gestures carry very different meanings in different countries, so a thumbs up or an OK hand is not automatically friendly everywhere.

Where to learn sign language properly

A chart of handshapes will get you through the alphabet. It will not teach you the language, because the grammar lives in movement, space and face, and none of that survives on a page. Learn from Deaf people.

Deaf culture is also part of the deal. Sign languages belong to Deaf communities, and learning the language without learning anything about the community it comes from is how well-meaning hearing learners end up causing offence. The capital D in Deaf refers to that cultural identity, not just to audiological status.

• Look for classes taught by Deaf instructors, at a local community college, a Deaf club or a Deaf-led online school.
• In the US, Gallaudet University and the National Association of the Deaf publish free and paid learning material.
• In the UK, the British Deaf Association and Signature list accredited BSL courses and levels.
• Use video dictionaries such as Handspeak, Lifeprint (ASL University) or SpreadTheSign to see signs in motion.
• Go to a Deaf social event or a silent coffee meet-up once you have some basics. Receptive skill only comes from real conversation.
• Do not rely on apps or on hearing influencers alone, and never use a sign language chart as a substitute for a qualified interpreter.