names of signed languages

[Tane Akamatsu]

Speaking of geo-political borders.....
In Canada, the signed language is called ASL, although I have seen some attempt
being made to refer to it as CSL, as distinct from LSQ.  Now that's the real
geo-political separator.  But look where LSQ happens: Quebec.  What's the
 difference
between Quebec and the rest of Canada?  The ubiquitousness of French.  Its not
 QSL
or FCSL (French Canadian).


Yes, THE ASL, because.......
a) the languages are completely mutually intelligible (trust me, I'm an ex-pat
American, living and working in Toronto)
b) any differences are at the lexical level, and there are several, but no more
 than
moving from one part of the US to another (which I have also done)
c) there must be other reasons......the US and Canada have the longest
 undefended
border in the world, they are each others' largest trading partners, despite the
bickering you see on TV or the dissing that some Canadians do of the US, there
 IS
peace and harmony between the two countries.  Mostly, Canada spends its time
deciding and defending the reasons why its not the US, and I think that's where
 the
"CSL" comes from.

Tane Akamatsu

Ulrike Zeshan wrote:

> I quite liked Angus' suggestion to use a local sign for the country together
>  with the local sign for "signing" in order to
> reduce ambiguity of the sign "signing" in various countries. If I have
>  understood you correctly, than sign language in
> India would be called BHARAT ISHARA "India Sign", which looks neat. But it
 still
>  doesn't solve my main problem, namely that
> the same sign language is used in Pakistan (PAKISTAN ISHARA?), probably also
 in
>  Nepal, and maybe in Bangladesh. So including
> the sign for countries doesn't help in this case.
> I want to make a further point concerning language boundaries. Some of the
>  examples mentioned in the discussion showed that
> it is actually a problem to know whether, for example, NZSL, BSL, Auslan are
>  separate languages or dialects. Note that there
> is no theoretically satisfactory solution to this problem. The boundary
 between
>  dialect and language is blurred, and often it
> is a matter of geopolitical factors and convention whether two varieties are
>  called languages or dialects. For example,
> Germans living near the Dutch border and speaking one of the local dialects
 can
>  understand Dutch much better than they can
> understand the Southern German Bavarian dialect, yet they are said to speak a
>  German, not a Dutch dialect.
> I would like to suggest to be cautious about assigning the name of a sign
>  language accordinng to the political country where
> it is used, be it based on English (JoSL...) or on the local spoken language
>  (LIU...) because it may turn out that the sign
> language used in the neighboring country ot countries is the same. On the
 other
>  hand, there may be regional dialectal
> variation of the sign used to refer to sign language. For example, in some
>  regions of India all five fingers are used for SIGN
> whereas in other regions only three fingers are used in the otherwise
 identical
>  sign. But still we wouldn't want to assign
> different names to these dialects of the same sign language on the basis of
 this
>  variation (which would happen if we were to
> use a transcription of SIGN). The more I think about it, the more complexities
>  arise...
> And one word about ethnocentricity: this is an issue to some extent insofar as
>  we (as "Westerners") assume a fairly homo-
> geneous relationship between political country and spoken language: one
>  country-one language (which is more or less the
> case in "our world"). This kind of monolingualism is not the case at all in
>  other continents.
> Ulrike Zeshan