common criticisms of signwriting?
SignWriting
signwriting at MAC.COM
Sun Nov 15 17:20:27 UTC 2009
SignWriting List
November 15, 2009
The Don Newkirk system for using ASCII characters to write the visual
nature of sign languages was never used by Deaf people on a daily
basis. And Stokoe and HamNoSys, although used in the linguistic world
for research and study, have not been written on a daily basis by Deaf
people either. There is nothing wrong with any of these systems, but
they were not designed to write the 21 chapters of the Gospel
According to John in ASL, or a 145 page novel written in the
handshapes, movements and facial expressions of Spanish Sign Language
from Madrid. None of them have enough development of writing facial
expressions to write real Sign Language Literature, because they were
not designed to write sign languages as a daily script. Nor do they
have sentence punctuation for writing long documents. But SignWriting
is spreading throughout Brazil for a reason, it is easy to write by
hand and yes...even by computer...and we have incorporated what Deaf
people have requested of us...to write down in visual vertical
columns, and not to write left to right, which our Deaf staff felt was
not intuitively proper for writing sign languages...
So Sandy, although I understand your need to want to write from left
to right, I would like to tell you that was the way I started too (a
decade of writing from left to right)...but Deaf people requested
writing down and that is why we changed...it took us a decade of
development and working with Deaf people to find out that writing from
left to right was not intuitive for signers...so you would be stepping
backwards in time if you write from left to right, in my experience...
For any new writing system to really work for the Deaf Community, you
will need to work with Deaf people to give you feedback to be sure
they will be able to read it and use it on a daily basis...
If you are developing your writing system for the linguistic world,
that is a different story, since most linguists do not need to reach
the Deaf Community with their writings...nor are they trying to write
literature, or work with Deaf children age 3! Stefan told me that he
taught a three-year old how to read SignWriting the other day...and
that more teachers in his school are using SignWriting now...the
visual nature of reading it is intuitive enough that it reaches
children in a way that an abstract writing system cannot...that is why
I am dedicating my life to its development, and the development is not
over...it is still ongoing...simplification of SignWriting is
happening daily...
As far as the complexities of SignWriting goes, actually no one uses
all the symbols in the ISWA...each sign language only uses a smaller
subset of those symbols...and for example, when Nancy wrote the Gospel
According to John, she simplified the SignSpellings quite a
lot...SignWriting is being simplified by its users out of necessity,
and that is good and the natural evolution into simpler writing for
daily use is happening naturally through usage...that is the way I
want it...it is more intuitive that way for the users, when their
writings are the tools that bring the simplification to the
world...Nancy's writing in the Gospel According to John is so
simplified, that it is easy to sit down and read the book like one
reads the English newspaper or a novel...fluent reading of SignWriting
novels and Bibles will happen more and more now, because finally we
have some literature of substance to read...the more reading material
is available in written sign languages, the more simplified
SignWriting will become...I have provided lots of detail with the idea
that people will, in time, choose what they need and discard the rest...
By the way, we started with around 60 characters years ago, in the
early 1980s, when we were only writing 2 sign languages...both were
related historically and so had a lot of the same handshapes...Danish
Sign Language and American Sign Language. But when you start writing
Ethiopian Sign Language, Sandy, you will find you will need more
symbols...that is why the ISWA has so many handshapes...because like
the IPA, we were trying to list every handshape we had written to
date, but not because we expect every sign language to use all those
symbols - not at all! I would say that Nancy probably used around 50
or 60 BaseSymbols to write the Gospel According to John -so your
number of around 50 sounds right to me...
21 Chapters of the Gospel According to John
http://www.signwriting.org/library/bible/Gospel_John.html
Sandy, please excuse me if I sound like I am on a soapbox...I guess I
have my heart in my own work...I do wish you all the best with
anything you try and I appreciate the work you have done with
SignWriting in the past...I really liked your other software you
started to develop for SignWriting and it is a shame we do not have
the funds right now to invest in it...Your idea of the stick figure
was very visual and great for the intuitive nature of SignWriting...so
I can see you have many abilities in many directions...smile...
Have a splendid day, and thanks for sharing...
I am now going to announce the new PocketPuddle next message...
Val ;-)
--------
On Nov 15, 2009, at 2:44 AM, Sandy Fleming wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 10:51 +0100, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> Theoretically I agree, symbols can be divorced from their accepted
>> meaning.. However, it would create utter confusion by people who are
>> used for the characters in a script to have a relation that is well
>> defined to sounds. They will try to pronounce it... only to learn
>> that
>> they are not used in that way anymore.. It is the same with
>> standardised transliteration from one script to another.. The sound
>> implied is no longer there. This makes no difference if it is your
>> sound values that are mapped.. and indeed it is a foreign language
>> that is represented so it is ok, the sounds are however still mapped
>> to one sounding system.
>
> I agree with that, and I wouldn't want to advocate any particular
> way of
> writing at too early a stage. Do we want to use the findings of modern
> linguistics to simplify SignWriting (especially if we can reduce the
> size of the ISWA dramatically) or devise something completely
> different?
>
> I don't know what's best, but I do think that one or the other will
> happen as people become more aware of findings in linguistics,
> especially with respect to sign language universals.
>
> Note that when I talk about "simplifying SignWriting" I don't mean
> using
> shorthand. I mean simplifying it in such a way that information
> significant to sign language execution isn't lost.
>
>> One immediate problem is that SignWriting illustrates well how
>> complicated it is .. I wonder if there are enough characters in the
>> alphabetic scripts to represent sign languages and, if it can be done
>> in a universal way. It is however not the kind of research I find
>> appealing as my gut feeling says that it will not work.
>
> I don't think SignWriting does illustrate the complexity of the
> problem,
> because SignWriting is more complex than it needs to be.
>
> To lay my cards on the table, I've been devising and working with an
> ASCII-based system and a similar specially-designed font (hence my
> long
> absence!) and I don't find any pressing need for more than about 50
> characters. This system is written linearly. I find I can write
> stuff in
> BSL with the ASCII character set and a few months later I can still
> read
> it.
>
> I'm now trying to decide whether it's best to stick with the linear
> version of the script or whether it would be better to just try to
> reduce the ISWA and stick with SignWriting.
>
> I don't know if anybody remembers that I did submit a text in "linear
> SignWriting" to the list a long time ago, but it wasn't well
> received :)
>
> Sandy Fleming
> http://bsltext.org/
>
>
>
>
>
>
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