LL-L: "Sign languages" LOWLANDS-L, 27.JAN.2000 (07) [E]

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
Subject: LL-L: "Sign language"

Am I right in assuming that the discussion of sign languages in Lowlandic
areas is being tolerated here because they're part of Lowlandic culture,
even though not Lowlandic languages?

> From: "Ian James Parsley" <parsleyij at yahoo.com>
> Subject: LL-L: "Sign language" LOWLANDS-L, 26.JAN.2000 (13) [E]
>
> If I could make a quick correction, Sandy, in Northern Ireland many
> Catholics will *name* their sign language "Irish" and many Protestants
> "British", in practice they are one and the same thing. Sign languages
> do, of course, have their own dialects, and as such there would
> probably be
> a variety signed by Protestants and a variety signed by Catholics (given
> it would be relatively uncommon, unfortunately, for the two groups to
> meet). But in reality it would be hard to claim Irish Sign Language is
> anything other than a variant of BSL.

I consider them two to be different languages because I can understand BSL
but can't understand ISL!

Although research into the neurology and development of signed and spoken
languages in individuals puts the two different kinds of language on a par,
it's important to remember, as I said, that they depend on two very
different media for their transmission, and there are many differences as a
result of this. Unfortunately many people tend to assume that all analogies
you can find between the two forms of language automatically hold in every
situation, and it's possible to jump to the wrong conclusions by false
analogy as a result.

One example of this is that when two monolingual speakers of mutually
unintelligible spoken languages meet, they will have great difficulty in
communicating. The analogy doesn't hold for sign languages, where whether
the signers can communicate or not really depends on their attitude,
education and experience rather than the languages involved. If they really
want to communicate, they will be able to.

For example, when I was in Belgium for a course in (spoken) French some
years ago, there were speakers of BSL (British Sign Language), LSB (Belgian)
and LSP (Portuguese) - plus one other. Although I had very little difficulty
in communicating with any of the members of the class, I still couldn't
understand a word that was being signed when people of the same nationality
were talking to each other (other than the British, of course). When it came
to the speeches at the end of the week, the hearing people were perplexed to
find that we needed interpreters (e.g. BSL to LSP) to understand each
others' speeches. After some of the group had split up I was talking to a
BSL speaker who also knew LSF (French Sign Language) about one of the
Savoyarde women, and when I mentioned her LSF, imagine my surprise to be
told she hadn't spoken LSF! It dawned on me that I'd been speaking to this
girl all week, and not only did we have no language in common, but I don't
even know what language it was she did speak.

I don't know, Ian - it seems to me that ISL and BSL are mutually
incomprehensible (though this is never quite as severe in signed languages
as in spoken), but if signers want to label their languages according to
religious divides, and they live in the same region and so have probably
picked up a fair number of the other's signs from speaking across the
divide, it would be difficult to establish the truth of the matter about
what they really speak. Even if you see a group of people signing away to
each other, it doesn't mean they all speak mutually intelligible languages!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
http://www.fleimin.demon.co.uk

----------

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Phonology

Sandy wrote:

> Am I right in assuming that the discussion of sign languages in Lowlandic
> areas is being tolerated here because they're part of Lowlandic culture,
> even though not Lowlandic languages?

You certainly are, Sandy.  I don't see how sign languages could *not* be
considered part of it.  After all, they *are* varieties of Lowlandic
languages, are at least in some part influenced by the dominant spoken and
written language varieties.  Some would argue that they are languages in their
own right.  You might be interested to know that American universities now
tend to consider American Sign Language (ASL) a language and knowledge of it
as satisfying foreign language prerequisits for admission.  Personally I am
all for it.  I would not be surprised to find out that the equivalents apply
in other countries.

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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