[sw-l] signs for countries

Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa shane.gilchrist.oheorpa at FRANCISMAGINN.ORG
Sat Jan 22 21:53:10 UTC 2005


Val,

It is interesting to see that many people are more than ready to drop their
sign for other countries if the country's sign isn’t the same - but in the
NISL community, it is decided among the language activists a while back that
we should stop following this trend and went taking back our old signs
because you cant force people to say "Deutschland" in England if u are
referring to Germany - I really hate it when people say "Éire" while
speaking English - when they do that, I would reply back in Irish!!! :-)

So all national sign language communities should keep their own signs unless
its to harm the relationships between one national sign language community
and another national sign language community - for instance, the Chinese
sign language community don’t really care if we do the 'eye' sign - even
thought many Deaf Americans (whose parents are Chinese) are against this but
the fact remains - there is a good chance most of them doesn’t have parents
who can sign Chinese ;)

So keep your own signs! :D

Shane



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