If you think that this video is scary, then you probably get frightned over Iraq's WMD's. You must get petrified everytime the color coded terror alert level changes, and you must be mortified every time "Dubya" announces that the 'terrorists' are out to harm America. You should rent "Batman Begins", and learn how to control your fears!

Boy, you weren't kidding about that guy. Why not just hire Andy Serkis and get it over with?

This very strange video is not teaching American Sign Language, which is a language, it is teaching baby sign, which is a recent parenting fad for communicating simple words and phrases to "preverbal" babies.

Frightening, yes, and I'm not sure I get the point of the video. Babies learning baby sign are too young to learn anything from a television, and the parents who are the real audience should by all rights be disturbed by it. What does this say about the monkey-man's opinion of parents' intelligence levels?

C'mon, Video Dog, get your facts straight -- at least listen to the first few seconds of the audio. Unless toddlers are now having infants of their own, the video's audience is parents who want to communicate with pre-verbal children.

The video is probably intended to be used much as the group parent/kid scenes in the video are set up, with adults and kids learning a few ASL signs together. It's not insulting or disturbing to parents or kids.

In fact, the whole setup is no more scary than storytime at the library. Mimic the Monkey isn't any weirder than a "live" Minnie Mouse at Disneyland or Barney on TV. You may not like Mimic, J.D., but the kids in the video aren't creeped out.

Lucky Achiever is right that ASL is a complete language, and this video tries to teach only a few isolated signs. However, it's hard to argue with helping children learn language, just as it's hard to argue with helping parents of infants communicate with their children more easily. Let 'em learn some signs. What's the harm?

For more information about American Sign Language, see www.gallaudet.edu or http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/. I'm not affiliated with either entity.

Thanks, Serious Notebook, for the links to ASL information. I posted my first letter mainly because there are so many misconceptions about sign languages, and to call baby sign ASL perpetuates this.

As a linguist and mother of a young child, I have to put baby sign in the mostly-harmless-but-generally-unnecessary category. Children learn language. That's what they do. There are some who do so more quickly than others, and a very few who have actual language delays or disabilities, but, generally, children will learn language regardless. The babies I know who sign do so at about the same level that they communicate generally, i.e., their ability to sign correlates with their ability to use words or other nonverbal means of communicating.

Anything that encourages parents to interact in positive ways with their children, and to pay attention to babies' willingness to communicate, is commendable, and I have no problem with parents who choose to try baby sign. But I take issue with the product-peddling that goes along with the baby sign movement, and any claims that teaching your child baby sign has long-term benefits (and that, therefore, not buying stuff and teaching your baby to sign is essentially depriving them).

Incidentally, all studies that I am aware of that claim long term benefits for baby sign are published by the same researchers that are now selling books, dvds, etc. to parents.

And I'm not sure I understand how using an annoying and slightly disturbing monkey-man in a video aimed at parents is not insulting to parents. I find the monkey-man insulting to even baby-level intelligence.