Acronyms [abbreviations] for SL

[Shane Gilchrist O hEorpa]

Mark,

maybe the adoption of the acronyms in the written language the signed
language is in use reflects the sign language culture.

For instance, when I say ASL in Irish Sign Language, Northern Ireland
Sign Language or British Sign Language, I would use the ASL
fingerspelling - the same for when I say ISL, I ll use the Irish
fingerspelling etc - its also common with many signers too.

It would look very strange if I fingerspell ISL in the British
fingerspelling - I would sign "Irish Sign Language"

a penny for your thought?

Shane

On 04/09/07, Mark A. Mandel <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu> wrote:
> "Sonja Erlenkamp" <sonja.erlenkamp at hist.no> wrote
>     >>>>>
>
>  With regard to the issue at hand the question is if the signed language
> communities tolerate these "name tags" to based on English abbreviations and
> what kind of role we researchers want to play in this.
>
>  <<<<<
>
> And "Shane Gilchrist O hEorpa" <shane.gilchrist.oheorpa at gmail.com> wrote
> similarly
>     >>>>>
>
> And its political here - it is up to the regional/national Deaf
> community to decide, not us linguistics - we cannot go and use fancy
> codes etc - some Finns were very impressed when I was talking about
> SVK, not FinSL - they said that I respect their language by using
> their acronym.
>
> Good example here - in Belgium, theres one signed language with two
> main dialects but the deaf communities there chose to give separate
> names - VGT in Dutch and LSFB in French to show that there are two
> separate deaf communities (just like hearing communities - the Flemish
> and the French speakers) but the community was always as one until
> lately.
>
>  <<<<<
>
> To return to my point, "SVK" is fine when you're talking to or writing for
> or signing/fingerspelling to a Suomi community -- sorry, I mean "Finnish"
> -- but unhelpful in English (or French or Russian or ...). I would have no
> problem with abbreviations like FlemSL and FrBelgSL. But the Flemish- and
> French-based abbreviations make sense in English only after they have been
> explained, and not fully even then. I can deduce that the "V" and "T" stand
> for "Vlaamse" and "Taal", if I've got them spelled right, but this is only
> one step better than an arbitrary code like "349". And it still doesn't
> answer the question of what to do if the name of some other sign language,
> in the spoken language of that region, also happens to abbreviate to "VGT".
>
>     >>>>>[Shane continues:]
>
> It is not really for linguists to decide on the name of the language
> (and the acronyms) - its the same with Irish - traditionally it is
> known as Gaelic (even in the Irish language itself!) but the Irish
> Government made it so that it is known as Irish, not Gaelic, just to
> be used as a nation-building tool.
>
>  <<<<<
>
> That argument holds within the country, and somewhat less strongly elsewhere
> among speakers of the same language -- in this case, English, the other
> official language of the Irish Republic -- but IMHO it loses almost all of
> its strength when we start talking about what to call a language IN ANOTHER
> LANGUAGE (that is not also a language of its homeland). See above re
> "Suomi".
>
>     >>>>>[Shane again:]
>
> For instance, we could call ISL "Ireslan" but there were objections to
> that (for political reasons) because the name Ireslan was promoted by
> a hearing nun in Dublin and other reasons.
>
> Its all about politics :-)
>
>  <<<<<
>
> Yes, but that is an intra-language matter for case-by-case decision (if it
> comes up at all for a given SL), hardly bearing on this question in general.
>
> -- Mark A. Mandel
> [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]
>
>
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