TOO: The American Sign Language (ASL) sign for "too"
 

Question:
A student asks:
I was thinking the other day about the saying "you're ___ years too early to ____ me" (e.g., "you're five years too early to beat me," "you're 20 years too early to give me orders," etc.), and was wondering how to translate that construction into ASL. So, the two questions I have are:

1. How do you sign "too" (as in, "too early," "too young," etc.? Do you use TOO-MUCH to modify the other adjective (e.g., "TOO-MUCH EARLY," "TOO-MUCH YOUNG"), or is there another way?

2. How do you organize a sentence in ASL that has this kind of dependent clause (e.g., "too early to beat me," "go shopping to buy a present," "too young to want to see that movie," etc.)?
 

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Response:

The TOO-MUCH sign is often used to mean "too" (as in excessive).

You can restructure your sentence and say "NOT OLD ENOUGH" (to mean "too young.")

Some bilinguals actually (sometimes) just spell TOO.
You can even modify the spelling TOOOOOOOO and add a sign like MUCH (as in a lot). That is a bit more rare though.

Or you can do a negative headshake -- depending on the context (as in that's too bad).

Or use the TERRIBLE sign which is often used as an intensifier.

Or use the TRUE sign which is often used to mean "real" and "really / very"

Or do your sign larger.

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