use of sign language in Jordan

[Dan Parvaz]

When I was visiting HLID (mentioned in Mohammed's dissertation, but the
English translation  left the name in Arabic as "Al-Aradi Al-Mukadassa")
there was a distinct hearing/Deaf divide among the faculty. The Hearing
faculty (with the notable, and laudable, exception of Br. Andrew) would band
together and talk in full view of the Deaf, sometimes signing every third
word. And I almost never saw them signing without simultaneous speech.
Perhaps Bernadet, who had more prolonged experience with HLID folks  can
correct my perception.

I had no idea that MPI had worked on a Jordanian SL course. I'm glad they
have, because as Bernadet said, there was much emphasis on vocabulary, and
the vocabulary you learned depended on the club you attended. They offered
long lists of vocabulary with no regard to usefulness, token frequency,
etc., and often offered invented signs which their club had agreed upon, but
which were unrecognized elsewhere. This same fixation on vocabulary was
manifest in the theses and dissertation which focused nearly exclusively on
vocabulary and not on structure (although things have hopefully changed
since I was there). One of the main textbooks at the University of Jordan on
Special Ed. traces the origins of all signing to de l'Epee! And talks about
vocbulary and fingerspelling, but not much about structure.

Again, thanks to the folks at MPI. :-)

Cheers,

-Dan

On 9/26/07, Bernadet Hendriks <bernie_hendriks at swissmail.org> wrote:
>
>  When I visited Quweisma school for the Deaf several years ago, there was
> certainly no sign language being used there, so this might be a recent
> development, but I think it is more likely that a rather ad hoc form of
> signed Arabic is meant here (which is often referred to in Jordan as Total
> Communication, as Dan mentioned). To my knowledge, the only school in Jordan
> in which experiments have been done with bilingualism using natural
> Jordanian Sign Language has been the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf. Even
> there, though, most teachers make up their own form of signed Arabic. In
> 2006 the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen, in co-operation with the Holy
> Land Institute for the Deaf produced a basic course in Jordanian Sign
> Language which is now being taught for those with the aspiration to become
> interpreters. Hopefully this course can in the future also be used to
> train teachers of the Deaf in using Jordanian Sign Language. This is,
> however, the first course of its kind. Sign language courses in Jordan have
> thus far mainly focused on teaching vocabulary, which means most teachers
> are not aware of the fact that Jordanian Sign Language has a grammar that is
> completely different to the grammar of Arabic and that speaking Arabic and
> signing grammatically at the same time is not possible. However, if anyone
> knows of schools which do use natural Jordanian Sign Language, I would love
> to hear...
>
> Greetings,
>
> Bernadet
>
>
>
>
>
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