Discussion question

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
February 23, 2004

ReBecca wrote:
> Sign Writing is attempting to make ASL into a written form, but it is a
> complex task....

Dear SW List, ReBecca, Stuart...
That is well written, Rebecca....

One last thought...SignWriting was not first developed to write
ASL...The first Sign Language written in SignWriting was Danish Sign
Language.

A lot of people assume that SignWriting was first developed to write
ASL, since I am an American, and also because a lot of our documents
are in ASL. But that is not true...I lived in Denmark in 1974, when
researchers at the University of Copenhagen asked me to develop a way
to write signs for their research, based on our general Movement
Writing system.

I had never heard of something called Manually-Coded-English in 1974 -
ha! I do not know if they have a Manually-Coded-Danish in Denmark or
not...but if they did...it was irrelevant, since SignWriting is not
based on any one language...it writes body movement and the writer
decides what movement, and what grammar they choose to write..

So please tell your classmates that ASL is not the focus of
SignWriting...ASL is only one of 27 signed languages written in
SignWriting...and it is equal with all other 26 signed
languages...smile...

Val ;-)