ASL Mushroom

[Marlon Kuntze]

Yes, I have been telling others about that. The ASL sign for mushroom is a
cognate of the FSL sign for mushroom. The hypothesis that I have been
entertaining is that when Laurent Clerc, probably not long after his
arrival in America, was asked to give a sign for champion, he, still
learning English, probably thought the English champion was the same as the
French champignon. The sign probably got stuck ever since. Maybe someone at
a different time showed him a mushroom and asked what the sign was, and
Laurent seeing it doubtlessly gave the FSL sign for champignon. Of course,
short of evidence, we cannot know for sure. At any rate, I think it makes
an excellent and enlightening antecodote of language contact and an
imaginative glimpse of what must have been a fascinating metamorphosis of
ASL as a new language.

Maybe Laurent himself after learning enough English had found the situation
amusing. Who knows he probably had made a comment to that effect in a
diary. Is there a diary somewhere? Does anyone know?

Lon

At 09:51 PM 5/6/99 -0400, you wrote:
>It's probably just coincidence, and I might really be stretching it here, but
>I noticed the sign for MUSHROOM is very similar to CHAMPION and the French
>word for mushroom looks a lot like "champion." Is there any correlation
there?
>Could ASL have borrowed it as a false cognate?
>
>Just curious.
>
>Randall Hogue
>
>