Finnish Towns

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
October 9, 2003

Nitsu - All these new symbols can easily be added to SignBank or 
SW-Edit, and in a few years, in SignWriter Java too...so it is just a 
matter of time. Right now you have to survive with what we have, so 
just write it as you did, or wait until I come out with SignBank for 
Research Use in March, 2004. I am not saying no...I am just saying I 
don't have software for you right now...can you wait until March? 
smile...and this is not strange at all...there has never been a written 
form for the world's signed languages before in history, and in 30 
years we have accomplished more than what other writing systems have 
taken centuries to create...so we can give the software a little more 
time! The symbols exist, and the software has to catch up ;-)

By the way, Chinese characters had trouble being typed in the beginning 
too...only in recent times has it become easier, because of Unicode and 
other developments...

Val ;-)

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Nitsu Pikkupyora wrote:
> I see your point very well. With Finnish sign HOUSE that's a possible 
> thing to do, but I think it still doesn't solve the problem. There are 
> other signs that must be distiguished... like the city name 
> Jyvaeskylae. It's a well-know place and the sign is widely used. I 
> illustrate the problem in the attachement. Even if we write HOUSE as 
> you suggested, in a "international" way, we still need to deal with 
> similar signs, which won't be understood if spelled incorrectly. I 
> don't mean that all the signs must be "exact", for example the earlier 
> mentioned Turku is no problem. But JYVAESKYLAE, MANNER, and some other 
> signs form a problem.
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>
>
> And here we come back again to the issue wich I remember 
> was discussed a long long time ago: how to write a car traveling up or 
> down a hill...in Finnish we use the flat B-handshape for that...That 
> would be easily solved by using the correct orientation... But 
> I understand it would get really complex to add so many new 
> orientations to softwares...
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> Still I wonder would it be technically possibel some far away day to 
> have a SW-edit -kind of program, were you could chose to use these 
> in-between orientations... in stead of having two basic orientations, 
> to have six...maybe not in the basic category ( where you chose 
> things) but any way in somewhere so that when you need them, you can 
> use them. Because when considering the everyday-writing issue, it 
> would be a LOT of trouble trying to convince the Finnish SignLanguage 
> users, that SW is a sensible way of writing SL, even though a very 
> important part of tha language cannot really be written...because cars 
> going up and down and all the hills and vallies are not some rare used 
> signs but belong to the core of the language...
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> I don't know...  it's strange that a thing so easy in real world and 
> even in handSignWriting, forms a real problem when talking about 
> computers...  
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> You see what I mean?
>
> Nitsu
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> >From: Valerie Sutton
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> >Reply-To: SignWriting List
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> >To: SW-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
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> >Subject: Re: Finnish Towns
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> >Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 09:16:23 -0700
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> >SignWriting List
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> >October 8, 2003
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> >But, Nitsu, here is my opinion -
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> >I believe that writing those inbetween palm facings is a good idea
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> >for
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> >Research Use, but for Everyday Use, I would choose to write the
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> >Finnish, Norwegian and American signs for HOUSE the same...YES...I
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> >know
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> >that the Finnish and Norwegian signs do have a different plam facing
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> >than the American...but does such detail really matter for Everyday
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> >Use?...
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> >When I moved to Denmark, as a hearing person, I had to learn my
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> >second
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> >spoken language, Danish. When I looked at the word "meget" in
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> >Danish,
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> >which means "very" in English, I found out that in the numerous
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> >dialects of spoken Danish, that the word "meget" is pronounced very
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> >differently around Denmark. The Copenhagen dialect pronounced it
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> >like
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> >"myeth", but on the Jutland peninsula they pronounced each letter
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> >the
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> >way we would in English...so why don't the Copenhagen people spell
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> >their version differently? because it would mean there would be many
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> >ways to spell the same word, and that becomes overwhelming for
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> >people...so spoken languages use the same Roman alphabet symbols to
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> >represent many different sounds...as you can see in
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> >"myeth"...Another
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> >example in Danish: the word "mad" means "food" and the "d" at the
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> >end
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> >is pronounced with a "th", like "math" except ...it is slightly
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> >different than the English "th" - so it is not like "math", but with
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> >a
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> >unique "d" sound to the Danish language...smile...writing those
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> >differences would be rediculous for everyday use...
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> >In spoken languages, we have the International Phonetic Alphabet
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> >(IPA),
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> >which is supposed to have a way to write these differences...so I am
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> >suggesting that our Research Use symbolset (SSS-2004) is like the
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> >IPA...and you may want to use that for your research...but when
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> >writing
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> >the sign for HOUSE daily, I would suggest using this standard
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> >spelling
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> >(see diagram)...So how would a person know how to pronouce the sign
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> >for
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> >HOUSE in the US and Finland?..When they live in the US, they will
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> >learn
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> >to pronouce it the way they sign it in the US, and when they move to
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> >Finland, the Finnish deaf people will teach them to do the
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> >orientation
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> >a little bit differently, but the sign will be spelled the same
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> >between
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> >the countries...smile...I hope this rediculously long answer has not
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> >confused you further! Val ;-)
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> ><< house-01-US.gif >>
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> ><< house-01-US.gif >>
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