SEE stands for Signing Exact English, a sign system designed to represent spoken and written English visually, word for word. Unlike American Sign Language (ASL), which is its own language with its own grammar, SEE takes many of the same hand signs used in ASL and arranges them to follow English sentence structure exactly. If you’ve seen someone signing and noticed it looked like they were “spelling out” full English sentences rather than using the more fluid, expressive style of ASL, you may have been watching SEE.
How SEE Works
SEE mirrors English grammar in sign form. Every article (“a,” “the”), preposition (“in,” “on,” “with”), and verb ending (“-ing,” “-ed,” “-tion”) gets its own sign or marker. Where ASL might convey “I went to the store yesterday” in three or four signs using spatial referencing and facial expressions, SEE signs each word individually and in the same order you’d write the sentence on paper. Auxiliary verbs like “is” and “are,” which ASL typically drops, are included in SEE because they exist in English.
About 75% of the individual signs in SEE come from the same pool of traditional signs used in ASL and other sign systems in the United States. The difference is in how those signs are organized, what gets added, and how strictly they follow English rules. SEE is, in essence, a visual code for English rather than a separate language.
How SEE Differs From ASL
The most fundamental distinction is that ASL is a natural language. It evolved organically within Deaf communities and has its own grammar, syntax, and expressive tools that don’t map onto English. ASL often uses a Topic-Comment structure (placing the topic first, then commenting on it), and it relies heavily on facial expressions, body shifts, hand shape, palm orientation, and spatial referencing to build meaning. A raised eyebrow or a shift of the shoulders can change a statement into a question or add emphasis.
SEE, by contrast, is an artificial system, a manual code created specifically to represent English. It follows English word order precisely and doesn’t use the visual-spatial features that give ASL much of its nuance. Because of this, SEE can appear rigid compared to ASL. ASL allows signers to convey emotion, sarcasm, urgency, and tone through visual cues that go well beyond hand movements alone. SEE, bound to English grammar, doesn’t leverage those tools in the same way.
Think of it this way: ASL is to English as French is to English. They’re separate languages with separate rules. SEE is more like a transliteration tool that converts English into signs one word at a time.
Why SEE Was Created
SEE was developed primarily as an educational tool to help deaf and hard-of-hearing children learn English. The reasoning is straightforward: if a child can see English grammar and vocabulary represented visually, sign by sign, they can absorb English language patterns the same way a hearing child absorbs them through speech.
This matters especially because more than 90% of deaf or hard-of-hearing children are born to hearing parents whose native language is English. For those families, SEE is much easier to pick up than ASL, since it follows the grammar rules they already know. A hearing parent learning SEE doesn’t need to learn a new language structure. They just need to learn the signs and use them in the English word order they already think in.
Where SEE Is Commonly Used
SEE shows up most often in educational settings, particularly in programs that emphasize English literacy for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. It’s also used in simultaneous communication environments, where a person signs and speaks at the same time. Since SEE follows English word order exactly, it pairs naturally with spoken English in a way that ASL cannot, because ASL’s grammar doesn’t match English sentence structure.
Children who use cochlear implants or have some residual hearing may benefit from SEE because it lets them match what they see in signs with what they hear and speak. The visual and auditory inputs align word for word, which can reinforce language learning from both directions.
Proponents of SEE also point out that children who learn English grammar well through SEE can later learn ASL as a second language, adapting to its distinct structure and syntax. Using SEE doesn’t prevent someone from also learning ASL, and many people become comfortable in both systems over time.
The Debate Around SEE
SEE is not without controversy, particularly within the Deaf community. Many Deaf advocates and ASL linguists view ASL as a complete, rich language and see SEE as a less expressive substitute that strips away the visual-spatial tools that make signed communication powerful. Because SEE is locked into English grammar, it can feel slow and cumbersome compared to ASL, which was built from the ground up for visual communication.
Critics also argue that treating English as the default language for deaf children, rather than giving them access to ASL as a natural first language, can limit their ability to communicate fully and connect with Deaf culture. From this perspective, SEE prioritizes English literacy at the expense of the linguistic and cultural identity that ASL provides.
On the other side, supporters emphasize that SEE gives deaf children direct access to English, the dominant language of the country they live in, at a critical stage of development. They argue that early exposure to SEE gives children language learning opportunities equivalent to those of hearing children, including exposure to idioms, figurative language, and the grammatical patterns tested in school.
In practice, many families and educators land somewhere in the middle, using a mix of SEE, ASL, and other communication approaches depending on the child’s needs, hearing level, and educational environment. There’s no single answer that works for every family.
SEE, PSE, and Other Sign Systems
SEE isn’t the only sign system that borrows from ASL while incorporating English elements. Pidgin Signed English (PSE), sometimes called Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE), sits between ASL and SEE on the spectrum. PSE uses ASL signs but follows a looser English word order, dropping some of the grammatical markers that SEE insists on. Many hearing people who learn to sign informally end up using something close to PSE without realizing it.
SEE is the most English-strict of these systems. If ASL is on one end of the spectrum and written English is on the other, SEE sits very close to the English end, while PSE falls somewhere in the middle.