I am in agreement with Doug on this subject. I took ASL in college because for some reason deaf people tend to gravitate toward me, even before I knew that they were hearing impaired. People tend to take the ASL language and butcher it up faster than a redneck speaking French. (I can say that, my husband is a redneck). Anyway, seriously, the deaf do not always have privy to the colloquial terms in our language i.e. "I found a dollar walking home" gives rise to the illusion that you saw a dollar bill sprout legs and walk home" or "You're killing me" could make them think that whatever they are doing may cause you to die. For the most part, they pick up on this fairly quickly, but some slang is regional and that is where the problem can lie. Or as new slang emerges they may not pick it up as quickly as the hearing world that may be exposed to it more than they are. I get really irritated when I go to a place where someone decides to "interpret" their song and they use the sign for "baby" when referring to a significant other. It should be changed to "sweetheart" or some other appropriate phrase! Also, all these "amateur signers" who think they can just go out and buy a sign language dictionary with pictures and use it to interpret a song and they butcher it up just irritates the crud out of me. I am even more disgusted when they do that and teach it to children, this may be the only exposure they have and that may screw up any chance they have of learning the language properly. Here is an example of how well intended people can mess things up. While I was in college, I had a friend named Mark who had a crush on a friend of mine Jill, who had been deaf since birth. He begged me to teach him some signs so he could go up and talk to her. I worked with him and even wrote down exactly how to sign each word, way more detailed than any book I have seen. He picked up the few key phrases really quickly, and we practiced for hours. I must add that I tried to dissuade him from using this without "adult" supervision as she may begin to sign back and he will not be able to interpret what her responses are. Mark was undaunted. Several days later he came to me very upset. He told me all the phrases he used, "Hello, how are you?" "You are very beautiful" and then the one that got the snot slapped out of him, "I met your mother" I asked him to show me how he signed it, and I burst out in uncontrollable laughter as he signed, "I had sex with your mother" After smoothing it over, they did date for a while until they lost touch when Mark moved away. SO this is why I think amateurs need to stay away from signing songs unless they have a qualified person to make sure they are doing it properly. Also, Squeezeldy asked an important question in the previous post, no matter which hand is your dominant hand right is ALWAYS base, unless you do not have a right hand or it is non-functioning these are the rules, it is like you trying to read the paper by putting it up to the mirror. Susu