Acronyms

[GerardM]

Hoi,
Typically the name for a language is a single word. Sign languages are often
known in a spoken language as "sign language" and quite often that is all,
no further differentiation. Most hearing people are not aware of the many
sign languages that exist.

Sign languages are typically associated with a country. It is for this
reason that the name is "Nederlandse gebarentaal" and apparently because of
Belgian politics "Belgian Sign Language" is not allowed. So contrary to
audible languages, sign languages most often refer to the country they
originate from. Sign languages are really politicised and not owned by the
signing people at all.

It is because sign languages seem to be controlled by countries that even
their names are dominated in this way. As the names consequently consist of
many parts an acronym is handy because of a lack of a proper name for a sign
language

Thanks,
    Gerard

On 9/5/07, Dimitris Mavreas <dmaureas at vodafone.net.gr> wrote:
>
>  I find very interesting the whole discussion. I must agree that although
> the use of these acronyms is sometimes defined by political reasons (English
> hegemony, decisions by linguists or sign language users etc.), it is also a
> matter of practical needs. Greek alphabet despite similarities is different
> from Roman or Cyrillic. It happens that Language in Greek is *Γλώσσα* (I
> hope you can read the characters) so we must obligatory  use the letter *Γ
> * in the acronym for the Greek Sing Language. The acronym in Greek is *ΕΝΓ
> * and it is also used by Greek Deaf people ugh man. Of course when I
> participated to an international conference, I used GSL acronym. I use
> instead ΕΝΓ acronym when I write in Greek. I also use ΑΝΓ in order to
> refer to ASL because I want a more transparent term for my Greek readers
> (and because it is also hard to switch the language on my PC keyboard all
> the time!)  Linguists can always go to the abbreviation list in order to
> find what GSL, NTS and so on really mean. Abbreviations are used to make our
> lives easier. At the same time it is interesting to consider why we don't
> have acronyms for spoken languages…
>
>
>
> Dimitris Mavreas
>
> Athens Greece
>
> _______________________________________________
> SLLING-L mailing list
> SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/slling-l/attachments/20070905/4b38d54b/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
SLLING-L mailing list
SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l