Finnish Towns

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
October 8, 2003

But, Nitsu, here is my opinion -

I believe that writing those inbetween palm facings is a good idea for
Research Use, but for Everyday Use, I would choose to write the
Finnish, Norwegian and American signs for HOUSE the same...YES...I know
that the Finnish and Norwegian signs do have a different plam facing
than the American...but does such detail really matter for Everyday
Use?...

When I moved to Denmark, as a hearing person, I had to learn my second
spoken language, Danish. When I looked at the word "meget" in Danish,
which means "very" in English, I found out that in the numerous
dialects of spoken Danish, that the word "meget" is pronounced very
differently around Denmark. The Copenhagen dialect pronounced it like
"myeth", but on the Jutland peninsula they pronounced each letter the
way we would in English...so why don't the Copenhagen people spell
their version differently? because it would mean there would be many
ways to spell the same word, and that becomes overwhelming for
people...so spoken languages use the same Roman alphabet symbols to
represent many different sounds...as you can see in "myeth"...Another
example in Danish: the word "mad" means "food" and the "d" at the end
is pronounced with a "th", like "math" except ...it is slightly
different than the English "th" - so it is not like "math", but with a
unique "d" sound to the Danish language...smile...writing those
differences would be rediculous for everyday use...

In spoken languages, we have the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA),
which is supposed to have a way to write these differences...so I am
suggesting that our Research Use symbolset (SSS-2004) is like the
IPA...and you may want to use that for your research...but when writing
the sign for HOUSE daily, I would suggest using this standard spelling
(see diagram)...So how would a person know how to pronouce the sign for
HOUSE in the US and Finland?..When they live in the US, they will learn
to pronouce it the way they sign it in the US, and when they move to
Finland, the Finnish deaf people will teach them to do the orientation
a little bit differently, but the sign will be spelled the same between
the countries...smile...I hope this rediculously long answer has not
confused you further! Val ;-)


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