International code for Norwegian Sign Language and others...

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
July 8th, 2003

Hello Everyone - and Charles ;-)

On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 04:38 AM, Charles Butler wrote:
> You could, at least as a compromise, go to the international
> designation for
> norwegian sign language as a written language.  Didn't Rocha get SWML
> and
> the various sw designations as affixes, like filename.sw passed
> internationally?

That's interesting. I know Antonio Carlos is officially using
..SWML...which is another format that we all will be using shortly...

Meanwhile, regarding official codes for Sign Languages...There is
already an accepted code for Norwegian Sign Language approved by the
ISO, because of work that Michael Everson and I did two years ago...it
is SGN-NO.

The .SGN designation was applied for, to the ISO, from our
organization, with the help of Michael Everson and his Irish
organization. The SGN code was accepted as the international code for
"Sign Languages" in 2000. This was a major accomplishment because it
was a lot of paperwork and defense. Then later specific names of signed
languages were approved too....the SGN was extended to state the
specific native signed language of a country by attaching a dash and
the country code. So ASL would be SGN-US and Danish Sign Language would
be SGN-DK. But this does NOT mean that anyone will change the name they
use for their signed languages...it is simply used for computer codes
in certain circumstances...just as EN is used for English, but we still
call our language English, and not EN. EN is only used for computers,
to list which languages we accept within email messages in the email
headers etc...

Read three PDF documents about this. Go to:

SignWriting PDF Library
http://www.SignWriting.org/library/pdf

Documents 33, 34 and 37.

Val ;-)