use of sign language in Jordan

[GerardM]

Hoi,
I am a bit puzzled. The need for a language is something that comes natural
to people. When people have not learned the "formal" sign language, it means
that people will "roll their own". This is as natural a language as a formal
language is.  There are obvious advantages to having a larger group of
people share the same language but dismissing what has been created within a
smaller group seems odd to me.

It is not important what sign language people use, my understanding of the
relevance of the study is that the step from whatever sign language WITH
SignWriting to learn the dominant written language is a lot easier and
effective then learning the written dominant language only knowing sign
language. What sign language is used is not the issue because SignWriting is
a script and can essentially be used in combination with any sign language.

Thanks,
    Gerard

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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