<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">SignWriting List<DIV>August 3, 2005</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Dear SW List, and Hope!</DIV><DIV>Hope Hurlbut, who has written signed languages in Malaysia, using SignWriting, years ago, working with SIL (I believe?) is that right, Hope? smile....Anyway...Hope is using SignWriting right now for Taiwan Sign Language .....Perhaps using SignWriter DOS? I am not sure.. Meanwhile, Hope does not have the time to read all the messages on the SW List so Hope is not on the List at the moment, but I have Hope's permission to post my answers to the List, so we all can share anyway!</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>So here is Hope's recent message to me...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>--------------------</DIV><DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Aug 3, 2005, at 2:15 PM, Hope Hurlbut wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -khtml-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -khtml-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Geneva; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV><FONT face="Arial"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; ">Dear VAlerie,</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT face="Arial"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; ">Thank you for all the sign language sites you have sent.</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT face="Arial"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; ">I hope I can plug-in to one of them soon. Right now I am working on Taiwan Sign Language, and inputting the signs from the word lists I collected. That is a very restricted set of data as you can imagine. Some words have up to 10 different forms, others only have one or two. Each list consists of 240 words, so potentially there could be 2400 signs, though in fact I am guessing that there are only about 1500 different forms. When I worked on the statistics, and combined the lists for each city, the similarities were from 89-96%. If there were 2 different signs for the same meaning in a city, and one of those signs was similar to one in a different city then they were considered similar. That assumes that within a city the signing was understandable between all Deaf signers. One person might use one sign, and another uses another sign, but they both understand both signs, even though each prefers to use their own.</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT face="Arial"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; ">Sincerely, Hope</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></FONT></DIV><DIV>--------------------<FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"></FONT></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Val answers...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Hi Hope!</DIV><DIV>You could use the Taiwan SignPuddle dictionary on the web to add your signs if you wish...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Go to:</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Taiwan SignPuddle</DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle/sgn-TW">http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle/sgn-TW</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>There are exactly two signs in the Taiwan dictionary at the moment, so we could use your help! Attached is one of them...try to see yourself by going to the url above and then, click on Search Dictionary...smile...I can teach you how to add signs to the dictionary if you are interested...it is quite easy...and it might be helpful to your project because it has less problems than using the old MS-DOS on modern operating systems...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Val ;-)</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN><IMG src="cid:9B296713-8BB3-4C4C-9847-4D7E263C858B@local"></SPAN></DIV><BLOCKQUOTE dir="ltr" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000EE" face="Verdana"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"></SPAN></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></SPAN></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>