[dhosek]

Letter signing is not typical in ASL and in any event BM is not a common letter sequence in English. I would also think that if I made eye contact with someone who signed BM to me, I would have to assume it was this signal or else they were being awfully rude https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/BM#English

[pseudosavant]

> Letter signing is not typical in ASL

Really? I'm not deaf, but I did take 3 semesters of ASL, and knew a lot of deaf people. In my experience, fingerspelling is incredibly common.

It isn't that people spell everything, but is very common to spell a very specific word, especially for something technical, that one of your following signs will represent. You might spell "Macbook M1", and then use the sign for computer in the rest of the conversation.

I've also found that many people that weren't born deaf, but went deaf later, or that had hearing parents that didn't really help them, often don't know ASL well. It was common for someone to not recognize a sign and the other person would spell out what it was.

A funny oddity about spelling and the deaf. You might (at least I did) think that since they spell things out far more often than we do in spoken English that they'd know how to spell well. That is generally not the case unless the person was raised by hearing people.

I knew a couple where the husband was CODA (child of a deaf adult, both parents) but could hear/speak, and the wife was deaf but was raised by hearing parents. She actually could spell well, but he couldn't, and that was very atypical.

[kirktrue]

Yes, just like with hearing individuals, not everyone can spell well.

Often times, just like when reading, one may not notice every single letter in a given word, but with the sequence of letters, autocorrect, and context, the meaning is usually clear.

[loonster]

Teh huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

It never occurred to me that this could apply to ASL.

edit: https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/

[xattt]

Even that has its own logical sign(1) with a variation to indicate diarrhea(2).

(1)https://www.babysignlanguage.com/dictionary/poop/ (2)https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=5860

[kirktrue]

Yes, as mentioned elsewhere, finger-spelling is common when introducing a new person/entity/concept into the conversation.

Regarding the person's expressions, it's common in ASL to employ very dramatic facial expressions to assist and augment the signs themselves to help the "listener" arrive at the correct understanding and feeling.

[thaumasiotes]

> and in any event BM is not a common letter sequence in English

What? It's a common euphemism for "bowel movement"; one of the most likely things to be spoken as a letter sequence rather than a word.

[dhosek]

And if someone is finger-spelling BM at you repeatedly, as I said, they're either in distress or being awfully rude.

[ohyeshedid]

> ...in any event BM is not a common letter sequence in English.

Mainly names, no?

[thaumasiotes]

This would only be possible with a syllable break as in something like fub/moore. Even then, I can't think of a name, or a word, or a common collocation, that features it. Syllables ending in /b/ aren't so common, though they're possible.

[dhosek]

After a bit of thought, I did think of submerge, submarine, and any other subm- words

[mkl]

Also "entombment", "webmaster", and variations of them. But not many; /usr/share/dict/words on my system lists only 45, many of which are minor variations of each other.

[thaumasiotes]

> Also "entombment", "webmaster", and variations of them.

"Entombment" is spelled with -bm-, but the b is not pronounced. (As is also true of the root word "tomb".)

[mkl]

Yes, but spelling is what we're talking about, and in particular spelling in sign language, so pronunciation is irrelevant.

[ohyeshedid]

Dobman/Daudman were my original thoughts, because I've known two families.

[falcolas]

Not in the US, at least.