Learn the ASL Alphabet: 36 Fingerspelling Flashcards and the Look-Alike Handshapes

ASL Fingerspelling: Alphabet & Numbers (code BC7884, 36 cards) covers the 26 letters and the digits 0-9 of the American Manual Alphabet. One structural fact before card 1: this deck carries no images. Every front is a letter, every back a written description of the handshape — so it drills letter to description, while real fingerspelling runs the other way, from a hand you see to a letter you read. Keep a manual-alphabet chart open beside the deck and treat the backs as checklists, not as the thing to memorize.

Sample cards

The whole set, grouped the way it is worth learning: the closed-fist family (A, E, M, N, S, T, O), the pointing letters (D, I, L, X, Z), the V-family (K, P, U, V, 2), the sideways pair (G, Q), the circle shapes (C, F, O, 9, 0), the spread shapes (4, 5, W), and the two letters that move, J and Z.

The deck describes collisions without naming them

Several handshapes are shared between two characters, and the deck admits it exactly once: card 27 notes that 0 is the same shape as O. Nothing on the rest. F and 9 are identical (index and thumb in a circle, three fingers up), as are V and 2; W and 6 use the same three raised fingers and differ only by the thumb-pinky contact; H and U are the same two fingers held together, one horizontal, one upright. Learn these as pairs from your first session: letter-or-number is decided by context and orientation, never by the shape alone.

That points at the deck's biggest omission: palm orientation. Only two backs mention which way the palm faces, yet orientation is what separates most of the alphabet from noise. Every letter faces the person you sign to except G, H, P and Q, which point sideways or down. One card you write yourself corrects a quarter of the deck.

Two corrections and one gap

The backs for 7, 8 and 9 are abridged to "thumb and ring touch", "thumb and middle touch", "thumb and index touch" — the other fingers extended clause got dropped. Add it, or those three cards teach a pinch instead of a number.

Card 30 offers "index, middle, and ring" as a variation for 3. That is the British form; ASL 3 is thumb, index, middle. Delete the parenthesis.

The gap is in the title: "Numbers" stops at 9. The forms for 10 to 20 are distinct — 10 is a thumbs-up with a shake, 11 to 15 flick the fingers, 16 to 19 twist the wrist — and none appear. Nor does anything on double letters (the LL in HELLO), or the fact that ASL fingerspells one-handed, unlike BSL.

Find the deck under code BC7884 in your library at flip-it.app. Once you can read fingerspelled hands, move on to lexical signs with Learn 100 Common ASL Signs and the ASL Linguistics Study Guide.