[SignWriting] What? No BSL?

[Trevor Jenkins]

On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Sandy Fleming <sandy at FLEIMIN.DEMON.CO.UK> wrote:

> One of the problems I'm having with SW is the lack of materials in BSL. Some
> stories, articles or letters in continuous BSL would be nice, so that I
> could verify the sort of stuff I'm writing. I wrote to Professor Woll as
> suggested on the site but he says he doesn't have any BSL materials online,
> nor much offline.

I followed the same route. It is a shame that the work that Prof Woll did
on SignWriting at Bristol now seems to be lost.

The SW Lessons are geared to ASL, which makes it dificult for those of us
who only know (say) BSL to understand the didactic point. Though others
have translated the manual into the signed language of their own
indigenous Deaf community.

> Any ideas for sources?

I think we're on our own here.

> Maybe a good idea would be to have a project listing, say, "My First 100
> Signs" in SW, listing the most common signs in as many sign languages as
> possible, to help people get started in their own sign language. I don't
> know what the most common signs in BSL are, though!

For reason that might be apparent RSN I've been reading Tony Buzan's "Use
Your Memory" in which he gives the 100 most popular words in *every*
language that make up 50% of conversations! (He doesn't understand BSL
because there are some English words listed for which there are no
glosses.) Usborne publish titles like "My First N Words in X" where N=100
or 1000 and X ranges over French, German, Japanese, Italian, Spanish.
Looking at their word lists might suggest what the first 100 BSL signs
should be. Or a SignWriting version of the RNId's "Start to Sign" book? If
R Parker can produce their "Revision on ..." guides why not a beginners SW
book?

Regards, Trevor

<>< Re: deemed!