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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Hello Maria and friends , </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>well - as I mentioned several times ago - I created
a set of mouth-patterns that go along with mouthing while the person is signing.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>In fact I invented a completely new system - called
"Mundbildschrift" but this is different from what is needed for transcribing SL
.. Nevertheless there is a link between both systems- </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The mouthpatterns of the Mundbildschrift allow DEAF
children to develop kind of phonetic associations of spoken words - (!!!! ) They
get familiar with these symbols during our articulation process and it is
amazing that already very young children (3 years old) seem to be able to
understand the idea of reading and writing "soundproduction" that may lead to
sensefull comunication ... Every mouthpattern stands for a individual vocal -
sound-production - </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>You will finde lots of examples on my homepage <A
href="http://www.gebaerdenschrift.de">www.gebaerdenschrift.de</A>
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>This way my little Deaf students are able to read Endlish,
Turkish or even Russian words and sentences - it is fun - but behind the whole
idea is a serious interest to support them in developing a huge amount of new
German words within a reasonable time ... We are still suffering from a lack of
communication during the first six years of their lives</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The discussion about the difficulties and problems with
lipreading shows that there are too many problems involved .. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>My symbol set for mouthpatterns concentrates on what you
can see - or rather exspect if you know about the German words that go
along with the signing </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Therefore you cannot distinguish between B or P and
F and W and so forth.. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>This is the reason that a transcription from a foreigner
who is not familiar with spoken German would have a hard time to write SW
documents that could be understood from German readers ;-(((( </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I did not know that unless I worked very intense with my
9th grade students - We read GebaerdenSchrift-documents on a daily basis.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I guess that I am still the only one around who exspects
his students to be able to translate long texts - up to 20 pages into spoken
German Language . I wrote most of these texts in signed German and we use SW
(GebaerdenSchrift) in order to create bilingual materials in order to improve
literacy -- </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>From my point of view it would be easy to understand a lot
of single written signs without any facial expressions - but within long
documents, transcriptions of interviews or storytelling - there is no chance to
understand the exact terms if you would not add typical mouthpatterns that stand
for typical articulatory movements --which are performed by the signer himself
.... </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Of course I would be able to write complete mouthing
patterns - but that is not necessary - In most cases it is enough to just pick
one out of the whole pattern - with the support of this facial expression you
can read the SW-documents fluently at high speed. I prefer to rather repeat the
facial expressions instead of using any additional lines or brackets ...
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I am still interested to learn to write a couple of
typical mouthgestures that are not connected with spoken language- and who knows
- once the gigantic SignBank project is done we will get the chance to
return to spelling issues . </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I am very very busy to create lots of teaching materials
for the coming GebaerdenSchrift-workshops , University presentations and
for my wonderfull students - </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>attached - students 7/8 years old writing "Mundbilder " at
th blackboard - </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>All the very best </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Stefan ;-))</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A href="mailto:maria.azzopardi@UM.EDU.MT"
title=maria.azzopardi@UM.EDU.MT>Maria Azzopardi</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
href="mailto:SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA"
title=SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, July 24, 2002 8:55
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: hoerah!! /mouth
patterns</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Dear Valerie, <BR>It was good to hear from you. I'm so glad you
are feeling better now :))
<P>I'm sorry I haven't been in contact much with the list.... :O( I have
however been reading all the messages that come in, and I remember the very
interesting discussion about mouth-patterns in European sign languages. I had
been meaning to add that mouth-patterns occur frequently in Maltese Sign
Language. In fact when transcribing the data for my dissertation (using
signwriting) I didn't know how to transcribe mouth-patterns (which were mainly
mouth patterns derived from the spoken language) using signwriting. What I did
was write the words in a seperate column next to the signwriting. This
worked well when analysing the spoken component of Maltese Sign
Language. However it would be great to find a way of transcribing these
mouth-patterns using signwriting, because in doing so the mouth-patterns would
truly appear to be an integral part of the signing (although how could you
show mouth-patterns of more than 1 syllable??)
<P>Hope you all have a great summer (just hope it's not as hot where you are
as it is here- mamma mia :)) <BR>Maria <BR> <BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE="CITE"><I>And last, regarding the mouthing and mouth
gestures needed in writing</I> <BR><I>the northern European signed
languages, such as German Sign Language,</I> <BR><I>Swiss-German Sign
Language, and possibly Norwegian Sign Language...I</I> <BR><I>would like to
suggest that Ingvild, Siv and Stefan communicate with</I> <BR><I>each other
on possible solutions. Stefan has already developed a lot</I> <BR><I>of
mouth movements written in SignWriting, based on the German spoken</I>
<BR><I>language. And I know Siv wants to add more....so I hope you will</I>
<BR><I>write to each other and try to work out some of the</I>
<BR><I>questions....Meanwhile, I am writing a report on writing detailed</I>
<BR><I>facial expressions. I hope to have that ready in the next couple
of</I> <BR><I>weeks. It will be included in the SignWriting Instruction
Database in</I> <BR><I>SignBank in September.</I></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P><BR>about mouth-patterns </P></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>