LL-L 'Lexicon' 2007.01.15 (04) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 15 January 2007 - Volume 04

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From: "heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk"
Subject: LL-L 'Lexicon' 2007.01.14 (01) [E]

Sandy Fleming writes:
>This is because Deaf sign languages each come with a classifier system
>for using the hands to express shapes and actions in space. Many signs
>are therefore constructed not from bits of earlier languages but from
>the components of the actual objects described, or the actions performed
>in using these objects.
>
>So a telephone used to be signed with two hands - one for the mouthpiece
>and one for the earpiece. Then it was signed with one hand, representing
>the telephone receiver. This is still current but runs alongside the
>sign for a phone as used by the deaf, which has one hand signing the
>receiver and another signing the keyboard. And then more recently
>there's a new sign for little rectangular mobile phone. Five signs, in
>fact, depending on whether you're speaking over it, texting with one
>thumb, texting with two thumbs, taking a photograph, or making a video!
>
>Cameras have had an even more interesting development. Originally there
>was the sign for someone throwing a cloth backward over their head. Then
>there was the camera held in two hands with the big flash and the button
>on a handle at the top that you pressed with your thumb. Then came the
>nostalgia-inducing Box Brownie, that has to be signed by looking down at
>a box held in the hands. Now current is the little camera where you
>press the button with your finger, although this is now being threatened
>by the cameraphone which you hold up with one hand and press with your
>thumb.
>
>Luckily, older deaf people sometimes make regressive errors and I've
>seen all of those signs used. But you can't exectly say that the new
>signs replace older ones. A camera where you throw the cloth over your
>head is still just that if you're talking about a scene in a Charlie
>Chaplin film (though it's only the hearing that use the old
>manually-wound movie-camera sign, the deaf have moved on to modern signs
>for modern video cameras).
>
>Retro signs can even be invented retroactively. Interpreters for the
>theatre don't necessarily point at their wrist to indicate "time",
>although this is the only sign you'd use for it in modern conversation.
>Instead they've invented new (but theoretically old) signs for Roman
>time, Shakespearian time, Victorian time and probably some others I
>don't know about, and nobody seems to have any problem with it!

As ever stunned by the brilliance and the exactitude of  Sign Language!
I love it. Thanks Sandy!

Heather

PS Ron did you mean to link Boob tube  with a word for TV????
English has used the word The Tube for a TV set but a boob-tube is quite
another thing!

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Lexicon

Hi, Heather!

> PS Ron did you mean to link Boob tube  with a word for TV????
> English has used the word The Tube for a TV set but a boob-tube is quite
> another thing!

Oh, indeed!  I ought to have added a "disclaimer."

In North America, "boob tube" refers to a television set, based on "boob" in
the sense of "dull, foolish person."

Elsewhere, "boob tube" refers to what in North America is called a "tube
top," namely a sleeveless, elastic woman's top, based on "boob" in the sense
of "woman's breast."

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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