LL-L "Language varieties" 2007.03.03 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 03 March 2007 - Volume 01

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L 'Language varieties' 2007.02.06 (10) [E]

Since it's quiet at the moment, and since some questions have been asked
recently about how easy and how useful it might be to learn sign
languages, and since this is describing an interaction between
Lowlanders with different language backgrounds, I thought it might be
acceptable to post this even though my feeling is it might get a bit
long!

I was out at a regular Deaf pub meet in Bristol on Thursday evening and
met a German woman who explained in Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS) that
she had been learning GDS for four months now since she was doing a
full-time course in Deaf Studies at her university near Dresden, and
that she was here in England for two weeks holiday.

Of course I'd never seen GDS before, but the fact that you don't know a
person's language isn't any great obstacle when it comes to sign
languages. We went on to speak about her family, who live within easy
walking distance of the Dutch border, what her aspirations for the
future were, the reunification of East and West German sign languages
after the wall came down, how much she loved snow and the sort of things
she would do in the winter, and so on.

I also asked her if she knew Low Saxon and said she heard plenty of it
but had never got round to making it come out of her mouth!

This ability to communicate without knowing each others language is well
known amongst the Deaf, but although a lot of it depends solidly on the
nature of sign languages, knowing oral languages is often a help as
well, since they can be transmitted via lipreading and fingerspelling.
Even although fingerspelling systems differ from place to place, it only
takes a few minutes to learn.

When the content of a conversation is mainly graphic, however, it's
possible to rely entirely on the graphic or "classifier" properties of
sign languages and converse quite fluently without too much repetition.

There's also the use of facial expression in sign languages: a huge
amount can be communicated in a semi-universal fashion through the
facial expressions used behind individual signs. Using the lip patterns
of oral languages tends to suppress this channel of communication, which
is one reason for avoiding speaking or mouthing at the same time as
signing. Facial expression is used for indicating interrogatives, size,
feelings and more.

So there was this perfectly fluent conversation, for example:

Her: Yes, I like the winter, I love snow. I wrap up in really thick
clothes and go out for a walk.
Me:  So you keep falling on your bum every few steps?
Her: No, I'm trudging along with my feet breaking through the snow.
Me:  But winters aren't cold enough now to go skating any more.
Her: Yes, that's a pity.
Me:  Do you go skiing, then?
Her: No, I go sledding.
Me:  You trudge up a big hill with your sled on your back and weave all
the way down through the trees?
Her: Um... sort of.
Me:  And at the bottom there's a lake and you can't stop and the sled
breaks through the ice and you sink to the bottom?
Her: No.

I'm not sure that classifiers are as universal as this example might
suggest, however. It may be that GDS and BSL may have similar classifier
systems because they might be somewhat related languages. I saw a
British woman communicating in BSL with a Chinese woman who used what
was presumably Chinese sign language on TV recently. BSL eyegaze is
usually indicated by using the index and middle fingers of the eye to
point along the two "eyebeams' from the eyes, while in DGS it seems
similar though not quite the same. But the Chinese woman seemed to sign
eyebeams as if slowly pulling out two long thin wires from her eyes. I
wouldn't have understood this if the other woman in the conversation
hadn't guessed it and asked for confirmation. The two wires also seemed
to represent the extent of the field of vision, so that when she pulled
them out sideways form her eyes I took it to mean "I see everything".
This is not something you can say so crisply in BSL, though that doesn't
stop me from understanding it, having, seen the classifier used
differently a few seconds before.

It seems to me there are always many more "false friends" between sign
languages than between oral languages. Here are some I noticed between
DGS and BSL:

DGS              BSL

what?            where?
no               what?
nice             man
long             bone
Saxon            insurance

As you might guess, a considerable amount of language exchange went on,
accelerated by the fact that signs are much easier to remember than
words. I now have signs for "Dresden", "Berlin" and "Frankfurt" to take
back to the British Deaf community, as well as a particularly striking
yet fairly transparent sign for "butterfly"!

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Thanks for that, Sandy.

It's simply fascinating and strengthens the argument that sign language is
the way to go as far as person-to-person global communication is concerned.
Among the hearing, I can imagine it being used as an auxiliary when people
communicate with each other that have no common oral language, in which case
it would accompany oral language.  The side benefit of this would be that it
would faciliate learning each other's oral language, just as you pick up
words and expressions from foreign language films that are subtitled.  But
would that make people even lazier when it comes to language learning?

Thanks again for the food for thought!

Reinhard/Ron
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