reading SignWriting for meaning....

[Valerie Sutton]

Stefan wrote:
>But if I would send a document written in German SL all you would understand
>is the movement (and the spelling violations  ;-((( )     but not the
>meaning of the document.


SignWriting List
October 6, 2002

Hello Stefan and everyone!
I got a good smile over this paragraph - You are right! I would not
understand the German Sign Language...That would be a little like me
trying to read a German newspaper or magazine in the German spoken
language! I might understand a little, but not much - smile....

Actually I was thinking of the newspaper we used to publish in
American Sign Language written in SignWriting. For four years from
1981 to 1984, we published a 20-page newspaper four times a year.
There were around 10 articles per issue. Each article was written by
a Deaf person about Deaf Community events etc, and they wrote the
articles themselves in SignWriting directly in ASL. And since I knew
some American signs, I was able to sit down and read the SignWriter
Newspaper for "meaning"....I didn't care about their spelling - I
wanted to read what they had to say...and some were good
articles...funny too...they even had cartoons in SignWriting! ;-)

As you know, Steve and Dianne Parkhurst published a mystery novel in
SignWriting in Madrid Sign Language recently with no spoken language
in the entire book - 140 pages of pure SignWriting....I don't know
Spanish Sign Language, so I couldn't solve the mystery...I wonder if
there are fluent readers in Spain who did?!

Steve and Dianne - I would like to purchase around ten copies of the
mystery novel in SignWriting...May I do so? I gave my one copy as my
gift to Richard Gleaves, the developer of the SignWriter DOS computer
program. Rich was serioiusly ill this year, but he is pulling through
now...He was really thrilled to see that his computer program had
made it possible to type a whole novel in SignWriting - so he grabbed
the book for his bookshelf and I was happy to give it to him ;-)

So please write to tell me how much I owe you for the books...I hope
you have some copies of the novel left?

Val ;-)