Motion diagram. This sign is outside the licensed video corpus, so the diagram is its full record here.
LEARN
“learn”
Pluck information from your open palm and carry it up to your forehead, fingers closing.
Where the sign comes from
IconicThe sign visibly depicts its meaning — a present-day resemblance, not a historical claim.
Taking knowledge off the page (the flat palm) and putting it into the head. LEARN, KNOW, and UNDERSTAND all cluster at the forehead — the site of mind in ASL.
- ASL-LEX (iconicity)Sehyr, Zed Sevcikova, Naomi Caselli, Ariel Cohen-Goldberg, and Karen Emmorey. "The ASL-LEX 2.0 Project: A Database of Lexical and Phonological Properties for 2,723 Signs in American Sign Language." Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 26, no. 2 (2021): 263–277. link
The sign, taken apart
Every ASL sign is built from a handshape, a place it's made, and a movement. Learn to see these three and you can read and store any sign.
Starts as all five fingers spread open; ends as fingertips flattened down to meet the thumb (a closed 'beak').
Also: number 5
Moves from the weak palm to the forehead.
The dominant hand acts on a still base hand.
Palm facing down.