<P> Another manual encoding system used by the deaf and which has been around for over two centuries is fingerspelling . However fingerspelling is a system that encodes letters and not words or morphemes, so is not a manual encoding of English, but rather an encoding of the alphabet . As such, it is a method of spelling out words one letter at a time using 26 different handshapes . In the United States and many other countries, the letters are indicated on one hand and go back to the deaf school of the Abbe de l'Epee in Paris . Since it's connected to the alphabet and not to entire words, it can be used to spell out words in any language that uses the same alphabet; so it is not tied to English, and to that extent, it is analogous to other letter - encodings, such as Morse code, or Semaphore . The Rochester Method relies heavily on fingerspelling, but it is slow and has mostly fallen out of favor . </P> <P> Hybrid methods use a mixture of aural / oral methods as well as some visible indicators such as hand shapes in order to communicate in the standard spoken language by making parts of it visible to those with hearing loss . </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section is empty . You can help by adding to it . (February 2018) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section is empty . You can help by adding to it . (February 2018) </Td> </Tr>

Studies have shown that asl acquisition may be faster than spoken language