names of signed languages

[Victor Brown]

Victor here. I'm responding to Ulrike's and Angus's comments at the same time.



> On Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Ulrike Zeshan wrote:
> > P.S. The idea of transcribing the signs used by deaf communities for
> > their languages does not seem practicable to me (even if there were a
> > good notation system) because in this case a number of (maybe many) sign
> > languages would have the same name.  SIGN in Indopakistan Sign Language
> > looks very much like the German Sign Language SIGN, and probably also
> > like the Thai one, as far as I could tell from the description.
>
>         This is a good point, Ulrike, but we don't need to borrow the word
> for "sign."  I'm sure the signs for "India" and "Pakistan" are different
> from the DGS sign for "Germany" and the Thai Sign Language sign for
> "Thailand."  In spoken languages, we already have names for all the
> countries, so we can borrow the country names from their respective signed
> languages to refer to the languages without worrying about ambiguity.  How
> does that sound to people?
>                                 -Angus B. Grieve-Smith

AN ASIDE: Transcription: I have been on and off this list (because of moving
and such) form many years. And from time to time we talk about
writing/notation/transcription.  Today, I feel pretty confident to say that it
is here to stay. And that those of us who want to should be allowed to mention
it from time to time. Ulrike isn't really talking about transcription above,
but the comments in parentheses caused me to think of this.  Anyway.

Ulrike, the sign, 'SIGN', may look the same, yes. But that is the point of a
writing system. To be able to do cross-linguistic comparisons and analysis. In
the same way we can see that "mucho", "escula" and "much","school" are related
in Spanish and English. (Sorry, I don't know German to give examples. I live
in Arizona) It isn't enough to say there is a sign for 'SIGN' and not one for
'LANGUAGE', I want to see what it "sounds" like to my eyes. If we didn't have
letters, I'd be telling you that in Spanish there is a word where the lips
touch, then pouch out, the tongue rubs the top of the mouth, then the jaw
drops. But, what if you don't know what 'pouch' means. Can you reproduce the
word I've described?  I realized that I am "preaching to the choir" here, but
at the same time, maybe I'm sparking an idea in someone else's mind. Like you
all do with me. SMILE!

I'm getting a little animated here. Because this is all coming to my mind as I
write. In the past it was just intuition and a gut feeling. Now it is starting
to make since why we need to talk about this and try and separate the spoken
and the signed languages.

----
Second thing. And I know this is really hard to do. I've been editing a report
this week myself talking about signed languages.....   There is a tendency to
say we don't need this or that in a country, because the Deaf only refer to
their language as X or only as Y. But, one of the reasons we are talking about
this is when language A comes in contact with language B. But, user-A starts
to realize that language-B in this country doesn't look like language-B in the
other country.

Again it is the cross-linguistic stuff... So we end up with American Sign,
Canadian Sign, Philippine Sign, when they are all American. (I know there are
variations. Just stick with me here.)  That is B, B1, B2, etc.  Similarly with
BSL, Auslan, and NZSL. (There was a presentation on this at TISLR. David McKee
or Graeme Kennedy from Victoria Univ. of Wellington, in NZ.)

This is analogous to English, Spanish, French. As long as I'm in the US, I can
say that I speak English, but when I'm in Bangkok, the locals distinguish
things as American English, British English and Australian English.  I
understand this happens with Mexican Spanish, Caribbean Spanish, etc. as well.

It is interesting that with US, Can., and Phil. we say ASL and the languages
are still very similar. But, with BSL, Auslan, and NZSL. They have independent
names, and have diverged enough (according to McKee or Kennedy) to keep these
separate names.

So, you can never tell what will happen with the name of a language.

AN ASIDE: Maybe some day people will be speaking American, Australian,
Mexican, etc. instead of English.  Notice in your computer today that you can
choose keyboards, and dictionaries that make these distinctions.

Back to trying to find out what a Deaf community "calls" there language...

What I am thinking here..., a new idea maybe..., is a way of "asking" or
finding out info...
is to chat with that community and find out how they distinguish themselves
from those Deaf over there. This will take some doing, but use their cultural
view to label the language they use.

If they don't realize that the language is indeed different (still
intelligible maybe), then help them understand why you (we) are looking for
the ways to distinguish language groups. My advice for those who want it, is
to stay away from Country names. Ulrike and Dan have given examples of the
confusion this can cause, and how quickly we start using jargon to "describe"
a language that may span geo-political borders. Just an idea. Not a mandate.
(After all I've never been to many of these places.) (And, from what I know in
Thailand, no matter where you go the Deaf all say they use Thai Sign. Even
though they will report that some people from other cities are not
understood.)

This in part could, might, perhaps, depends on knowledge of "groupings",
geography, etc., and even "bilingualism" like Ulrike mentioned. You (we) may
discover that a Deaf community just doesn't make those kinds of distinctions,
or maybe they do, but don't have establish, standardized vocabulary. But,
don't all languages go through this? Spelling in English long ago, then the
American decision to "convert" 'ou' to 'o' way back when. Or currently, in
some Spanish countries to start sorting CH and LL inside C and L.

But, isn't that why we are doing what we do, because of these very kinds of
challenges?

I have to say here that I do indeed find all this fascinating. And to have
others find it fascinating as well makes me smile. And on some days it is
these emails that get me through the day. ;)

SMILES,
Victor