"Accent" & Nortel

[Tane Akamatsu]

Apropos of Bencie's comment:

> A 'V' handshape sign for VOICE has been reported to me by individuals
> from two universities with Deaf Studies departments in the UK - this
> may reflect my earlier comment that borrowing from ASL to BSL seems
> to occur predominantly in semantic field associated with linguistics.

More anecdotal evidence for accent:

When I was in Australia at a conference for deaf educators for a week a
few years ago, and had plenty of time to watch/hear English/Auslan.  I
noticed that Auslan had borrowed several signs from ASL (primarily
initialized signs such as TC (total communication), PROGRAM (or maybe I
should say PROGRAMME?), CLASS and several others that I can't remember
right now), and changed the phonology to match Auslan phonology.  I make
this claim because the signs, though recognizable as ASL signs, looked
"funny" to me.  Either the handshapes had changed, in the case of CLASS
-- from the double American C-hand to the double Australian C-hand -- or
the movement was different, in the case of PROGRAM, but I can't remember
how, exactly.    I'm going back to Australia this summer/winter for the
International Congress on Education of the Deaf, so maybe I'll keep a
closer watch on the Auslan signing.

Maybe as others of you also attend the sign linguistics conference in
Europe, you can watch for accent there too?

Tane Akamatsu