How to sign movie and book titles?

[mightyoaks]

My 2.5yo has speech difficulties and fascinated with movies with dogs in them. Un/fortunately, we happen to own several Disney videos with dogs in them, and she gets so mad at us if we don't know which one she wants in one or two guesses. I can only imagine how insanely frustrating it must be to know exactly WHAT you want to say and little or no way to SAY it. :(

I taught her to sign dog + movie so she can now tell us that, but we're still in the quandry of which one. LOL Would we sign the whole title or just some keys words? I suppose since she's only 2yo it really doesn't matter so long as she can communicate which one, but I'm interested in teaching my older children the common ASL way of signing a movie or book title. TIA!

[dmmetler]

Is there something on the cover which would be distinguishing, so she could sign RED DOG MOVIE or BLUE DOG MOVIE, maybe?

[mightyoaks]

The spines of the movies all have the main characters on them. That's how she identifies them. For instance, Lady and the Tramp has Lady & Tramp on the spine. So would I sign LADY+DOG+MOVIE? 101 Dalmations... SPOT+DOG+MOVIE?

[jenml]

I'm interested in teaching my older children the common ASL way of signing a movie or book title. TIA!

You may not want to hear this... but the ASL way to sign titles of books or movies is by fingerspelling. It's not user friendly for kids, I suppose, but...

When I was learning ASL (way back when in 1990), I had all Deaf teachers. One teacher, in particular, who was Deaf of Deaf was very adamant about this topic. So for instance, if I was talking to him today about "Curious George", the movie, he would insist that it be FS (at least first) and not using the sign CURIOUS. He said it's confusing when a title is not spelled at first because the gloss of the sign may not be the exact title of the movie.

But I do like the idea (of the previous post) about calling it something distinguishable... that's what we do with my son to talk about his tapes (or whatever).
He calls "Wiggle Safari": "Crocodile Hunter Wiggle", which is easy to sign: CROCODILE HUNTER WIGGLE (we sign wiggle by doing the "point your finger" move and shake them like the trademark move that they do).
He has SNOWMAN WIGGLE, SANTA WIGGLE, COWBOY WIGGLE... and I don't know the real names of these tapes!! haha But I know what he's talking about.

For the dog issue... maybe you and your child can figure out some distinguishable thing about the dogs to differentiate them... like act out a particular thing that the dog does, or what it looks like.

HTH

[aligreat]

Yes, in true ASL you do have to fingerspell the title. We have eleven videos of children's books done in ASL by various signers. They all fingerspell the title at the beginning, but some of them also translate the title into ASL after fingerspelling.

However, it doesn't really matter what the "true ASL" way to do something is within the walls of your own home. There have been many posts from people worrying about giving name signs to family members because within Deaf Culture only a Deaf person can give a name sign. It is wonderful to respect Deaf Culture, but at the same time your primary objective in signing with your child is to open a line of communication. Come up with something that makes sense to you and your child, but keep in mind that home signs are not understood outside of your home.

[mightyoaks]

Thank you so much! You all gave me the info I was looking for... ideas for how to handle things here at home AND how it would be done properly in ASL.