AW: ZURICH: WRITING REPETITIVE MOTION...or Question Spelling FROG/FROSCH

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
August 5, 2003

Hello Stefan..Thanks for this message...

> this sign is not the sign for the "Swiss - German" Frog  but it is the
> running of a lion ;-))

I could not find the attached sign for lion...did you attach it?

> - it is almost impossible to identify a single sign without the facial
> expressions for the "Mundbilder" -
>
> I can imagine that some day we will discuss the writing of the
> "Mundbilder"
> as I call the movements of the lips while the person performs
> movements as
> if speaking - for other SL of the world as well -
>
> Since I defined a list of facial expressions to symbolize a special
> set of
> articulation movements (Mundbilder) I am able to read even very old
> documents without any difficulty. Single entries in a dictionary can be
> identified btter. One proble might be that from SL to SL the set of
> mouthsymbols may be different ... But everybody of us is writing for a
> special audience - and the readers are usually informed SL users ...


Yes, of course, I know that your Mundbilder standard symbols, based on
SignWriting facial expressions, are excellent, and I am impressed with
its accuracy for those who know spoken-German!

Obviously, when I was writing from videotape, as I did the Swiss-German
Sign Language storytelling for NOAH, I was not basing anything on
spoken language...There was no sound on the QuickTime video clips that
the Swiss group gave me, plus the person who was signing was using a
very "Deaf storytelling style" and I bet she wasn't thinking of spoken
words...So I just wrote what I saw her lips do, and I did not write
every detail of mouth movements either...so naturally it would not be
the same as your Mundbilder standardization...so this might be a case
where standard "storytelling" facial expressions could be categorized
someday...standards like that could be established without hurting the
flexibility of the general SignWriting system...

So a question is: Will all German-speaking countries adopt the same
Mundbilder? That would be an interesting question...the signs are
different from country to country, but maybe the movements of the mouth
are the same in German-speaking countries?...;-)

>
> Thanks again for your wonderful
> email lessons

Thank you for expressing your thanks for my lessons - I appreciate it!

Val ;-)


Valerie Sutton
Sutton at SignWriting.org

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