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Fingerspelling first: the alphabet trainer. Receptive fingerspelling is the classic first skill — easy to sign, hard to read. Drill any word, quiz yourself, and watch your score climb.
Heads-up: the 3D signer downloads a ~25 MB model on your first visit — it's cached after that.
Speed
Type any word and the avatar spells it — letters appear in sync with the hands.
Your progress
Quiz results land here — your score, streaks, and the letters that trip you up. Take your first quiz to start the record. Progress is saved on this device.
Keep going
More ways to learn
Your name in ASL
Watch any name fingerspelled letter by letter, with the hand moving from each letter shape to the next, and send a link that spells your friend's name too.
Spell a name
Full sentences
Type any English sentence and see how SimuSign orders it for ASL — reordered clauses, grammar on the face.
Open the studio
What this is
Reading fingerspelling, not just signing it
Receptive practice means reading signing rather than producing it. With fingerspelling the two skills come apart sharply: the twenty-six letter handshapes take an afternoon to learn and years to read at conversational speed, which is why fingerspelling is so often called the first thing learned and the last thing mastered. Watching your own hand teaches you almost nothing about reading someone else's.
So this trainer points the other way. In Drill the signer spells a word while the letters light up underneath in time with the hands — you can see the shape and the letter at the same moment, replay the word, and slow it down until a letter that keeps escaping you stops escaping you. In Quiz the word is hidden: you watch it spelled once, type what you read, and find out whether you were right. Your score, streaks and the letters you miss most accumulate beside the trainer.
It runs in your browser with no account, and your progress stays on the device you practise on; like every page of the site, it sends the usage events and error reports described in our Privacy Policy. It is a study aid: it cannot watch you sign, cannot correct your production, and is not a replacement for a live interpreter. A teacher does the first two and a qualified human interpreter does the third. We're refining every animation and our ASL grammar, and bringing ASL professionals into that work.
Answers
Common questions
What does receptive practice mean?
Reading signing rather than producing it. Most people find fingerspelling easy to produce and hard to read, which is why it is often described as the first thing learned and the last thing mastered. Receptive practice is the deliberate work of closing that gap: watching a word spelled at speed and recognising it, rather than watching your own hand.
How does the trainer work?
Two modes. In Drill the avatar spells a word and the letters light up underneath in time with the hands, so you can watch the shape and the letter together and slow the whole thing down when a letter will not stick. In Quiz the word is hidden: you watch it spelled, type what you read, and the answer is scored. Your score, your streak and your weakest letters accumulate beside the trainer.
Is this real ASL?
SimuSign is in Early Access: the signer may mis-sign a word, or sign words in an order a fluent signer would not use. The trainer forms one handshape per letter of the manual alphabet, and in the translator SimuSign reorders each sentence for ASL rather than signing English word order with signs dropped in. A rendered avatar is not a fluent signer: rhythm, transitions and facial detail are where it is still improving. We're refining every animation and our ASL grammar, and bringing ASL professionals into that work. We say where we fall short rather than rounding it up.
Does the trainer spell every word?
Yes — spelling every word is the point. This is receptive fingerspelling practice, so there is nothing in the trainer that would be signed instead; a word that got signed here would be a word you did not get to practise reading. The translator behaves differently: there, a word with a hand-authored sign gets that sign, and only the words without one are fingerspelled, shown as fingerspelling so you can tell which you are looking at. A word without a sign is fingerspelled, never given an invented sign.
See how full sentences are signedDo I need an account?
Not for this. The trainer runs in your browser without an account, and your progress is kept locally on the device you practise on; like every page of the site, it sends the usage events and error reports described in our Privacy Policy. An account exists for translating full sentences, not for practising letters.
Can this replace an ASL class or an interpreter?
Neither. It is a study aid — useful for drilling recognition between lessons, not a substitute for a teacher who can watch you sign and correct you, and not a replacement for a live interpreter. Anything with consequences needs a qualified human interpreter.