Names of signed languages

[Angus B. Grieve-Smith]

        In general, I think using words for "signed language" taken from
different spoken languages can cut down on the kind of ambiguities that
are almost inevitable when the only distinctive markers are the initial
letter of the name of a country in English, plus one binary distribution
variable (SLX vs XSL).

        This whole discussion obscures an issue that Victor Brown touched
on: all the alternative names are taken from the spoken language that is
linked to the signed language in question, i.e. "gebarantaal" is Dutch,
not NGT/SLN.

        If we had a nice Roman-based transcription system, we could use
the names that are actually used by the signers of those languages.
Anyone up for compiling a list of names and transcribing them into Newkirk
'86?

                                -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
                                Linguistics Department
                                The University of New Mexico
                                grvsmth at unm.edu