Twenty-five second generation deaf signers (6-16 years old) participated in three experiments measuring their ability to classify fingerspelled and signed words and attend to the individual handshapes within fingerspelled words. Results revealed that Ss could discriminate fingerspelled words and decompose fingerspelling into the handshapes that map into English orthography. Even the youngest Ss demonstrated full metalinguistic competence in these tasks. Findings suggest that there is a possible link between the signer's natural language and reading, and that deaf Ss have the ability to capitalize on this link. The link may help them decode words into fingerspelling in the same way spoken language allows decoding into sound. (CL)