Is Sign Language a Language?

[Philocophus]

Fortunately, no she has no authority to block the recognition of BSL. The
recognition of BSL ha spassed its first phase and is due to progress through
2 more phases before full recognition is allocated. It went the same way for
the Welsh language some 25 years back.

Regards
Raymond Lee
Head of Research & Publications
British Deaf History Society
UK.

Philocophus at philocophus.demon.co.uk

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Angus B. Grieve-Smith" <grvsmth at UNM.EDU>
To: <SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2003 4:49 PM
Subject: Re: Is Sign Language a Language?


>
>         Does she have some authority to block recognition of BSL at some
> level?  If so, I'd want to find out how such a closed-minded person got
> into a position of power (not that I'm surprised).  If she just wants to
> vent, then you two can amuse yourselves for years this way.
>
>         I feel pretty comfortable with the idea that signed languages are
> languages, but I don't think it's very productive to quibble over
> terminology.  From a practical point of view, I feel that:
>
> - signed languages are an awful lot like spoken languages
> - it is very difficult for the vast majority of Deaf people to gain
> fluency in a spoken language and have a life as well
> - Deaf education is a lot like bilingual education
> - converting from a signed language to a spoken language via computer is
> an awful lot like machine translation
>
>         The two kinds of languages clearly have differences, but the
> similarities are very important, for purely practical reasons.
>
>                                         -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
>                                         Linguistics Department
>                                         University of New Mexico
>                                         grvsmth at unm.edu
>                                         grvsmth at panix.com