AW: [sw-l] hello!

[Stefan Wöhrmann]

Hi Suzanne,

and welcome to the SW- list.
Reading your message I had to smile. Since I am already pioneering SW or
GebaerdenSchrift as we call it here in the German speak part - for some
years now - it is always the same.

There is no way to get reasonable answers to this question - Nobody but the
person who is missing the grandious benefits that are offered by this
incredible invention - would believe that it would be worth to spend so mch
time in developing reading and writing skills.

In former years the messages on the list focused much more on spelling
issues which has been very important to me. So in order to develop many many
materials and GebaerdenSchrift-Dokuments.

Today I finished another workshop on "Learning to write GebaerdenSchrift"
and still I teach how to create beautiful and most valuable documents for
teachers, SL - instructors, interpreters ... with the good old DOS - Sofware
SW44

Big sigh that people stopped to care about the problems with SW44 - and the
folks that still are aboard on a sinking ship!? ( the dictionary does not
allow more than almmost 11 000 entries ) ( Hi Sandy, Stephen, Adam, Trevor,
Stuart and the Brazilian crew and the other teams around the world please
forgive my impatience - ...

In German Signlanguage  as you may know the "Mundbilder" are very important
to understand and discriminate signs.
It took me and my team quiet a long period of time to develop a standard for
"Symbols that represent mouthmovements as if articulating words"

You will find such a ovierview on my website - www.gebaerdenschrift.de

The Netherlands are not too far away from Osnabrück - where I am teraching
at a school for hearing impaired children.

All the best - and it would be great to get started in the Netherlands!

Stefan ;-))




-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
[mailto:owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu]Im Auftrag von Suzanne Pach
Gesendet: Sonntag, 12. Dezember 2004 17:49
An: SW-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
Betreff: [sw-l] hello!


Hello!

I just joined the list, so I will shortly introduce
myself. My name is Suzanne Pach. I live in Utrecht in the
Netherlands. I am a student of linguistics and last year I
also started a study to become a teacher in Dutch Sign
Language, both in Utrecht. I'm not deaf, but I just really
like sign language, so I'm glad I get the opportunity to
learn it.

For my linguistics-study, I need to write a final thesis
to get my bachalor diploma. My subject will be
SignWriting.
By chance I dicovered the SignWriting site, but I never
heard about it before. As far as I now, it isn't used in
Holland at the moment.
I want to focus on the Dutch deaf education and answer the
question whether it should be a good idea to start
teaching SignWriting to deaf children there. My plan is to
design a questionnaire to ask different (dutch) groups
about this question. Those groups could be: deaf children,
deaf adults, deaf-school teachers, linquists.....

Do some of you know if such a questionnaire is already
used in another country (or countries)?? It would be nice
to compare the results.

I also got a more technical question. It is about the
spoken component. In Dutch Sign Language it is used a lot.
For example to distinguish the words 'brother' and
'sister', you just make the same sign and you speak the
dutch word with your mouth. I read the SignWriting lessons
on the website, but I didn't see anything about how to
show the spoken component.

Well, thanks and goodbye,

Suzanne Pach