Entesùka Sign Script

This is a script that allows writing different kinds of hand signs, it was designed as a way to make and teach Entesùka’s official sign language, but it might as well be usable for other sign languages. It absolutely isn’t possible to adapt it for computers holy shit that would be a pain no thank you. You can use MS Paint or something, though.

How to read it

The arms

The arms are the main reason why this thing is absolutely not compatible with computers: They are literally just lines that are there to represent where the arms are. You can represent where the arm starts by using a dot in the part where the shoulder would be, and represent which arm is it by using an arrow in case it’s ambiguous which arm is it. Generally, it can be assumed that an arm that starts on the left side is the left arm, and same for the right arm, but that doesn’t have to be the case.

Two arms doing an X position. Curves and stroke width are entirely aesthetic.

The hand

There are three symbols to represent finger positions. These start from the thumb, and are applied to every finger after that. To represent touching fingers, just draw a line between them. In the case of the thumb, which can touch individual divisions of a finger, the top one is assumed, and the other two can be marked by putting a dot above (for the middle division) or below (for the bottom division) the line.


Extended finger // Half extended finger // Not extended


The finger symbols are read from shoulder to hand.

There are three directions in which a finger can be extended: Parallel to the pal, perpendicular to the palm, and towards the palm (though extending most fingers towards the palm is very similar to closing it, with the difference that there’s no contact between the finger an the palm).

Top parallel to the palm, middle is perpendicular to it, and bottom is towards it.

To represent crossed fingers you draw a dot at the beginning of the line. If the crossing has an “embrace”-ish form, an arrow is drawn at the end of it.

Palm directions are represented with the following shymbols near the hand:

Right // Up // Speaker-wards // Listener-wards // Left

Contact with the body

For an arm touching itself or the other arm you just draw them touching. For an arm touching a specific part of the upper body you can just put them where they would approximately be, and draw the hand with a perpendicular line on its hand. To help set up the proportions, two lines can be drawn where the top one represents where the chest starts and the bottom one represents the beginning of the upper body.


Tummy rub.

For the face, you just draw a circle to represent the face (it doesn’t have to be perfect, just circley!) and use and to represent where the left and right index fingers are touching, respectively. Then you can specify finger positions or arm angle at the sides of the face, where the left side will represent the left arm and the right side will represent the right arm. You can use lines to represent the eyes, mouth and noise if you want to set up the proportions. Other fingers are marked with the following symbols.


Ordered from thumb to pinky.


Index fingers near the eyes.

Cross-hand finger interactions

Now that the finger symbols have been introduced, it can be explained that to make cross finger touching, you draw the symbols for the touching fingers under the sign, and on top or under them draw a line representing the division that is entering in contact. Top for first division, bottom for second division, and for middle division a dot before or after it. If they’re crossing, a dot abover or under the finger that is “embracing” the other is drawn.

Very specific hand interactions

Sometimes, a hand’s position relative to the other is important. For this, you can draw lines that will represent the hands below the sign. It’s possible to represent where the hand starts with a perpendicular line.


Two hands making a pyramid, position of the fingers not specified

Example sentences in Entesùka