SignWriting and HamNoSys at same University in Hamburg...

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 4, 2004

Dear SW List, Antonio Carlos, Sandy and Daniel!
Thank you for the discussion below about the different purposes for
SignWriting and HamNoSys. Your explanations are correct!

So let me explain from my point of view...

First, there is an article on the web....You can see a comparison
between SignWriting, HamNoSys and Stokoe on the web...This is a fun
article because it shows it so visually, with the writing systems side
by side:

Start here:
http://signwriting.org/forums/linguistics/ling001.html

continues to...

http://signwriting.org/forums/linguistics/ling007.html

If you read the whole web article, which includes several web pages,
you will find information about the differences between the writing
systems towards the end...

Second ....the history behind the systems is interesting....
SignWriting had already been in use for a decade, in the country next
door...Denmark...before HamNoSys was developed in Hamburg, at the
University of Hamburg. So the HamNoSys developers knew of SignWriting
when they began their work. Some of the SignWriting teachers from
Denmark actually traveled to present SignWriting to them....I need to
find an old paper about this, that will be an historical record of
this...The HamNoSys developers at that time wrote (these are my words
tying to explain generally what they said).. that although SignWriting
was designed to write stories in signed languages for Deaf children,
they needed a linguistic tool for linguistic research......so that is
why they developed HamNoSys....These are my words trying to describe
what they said in general in their paper...so don't quote this, until I
can find their old paper...

So you can see that the two systems were developed with different
goals...one for linguistics and one for Deaf Education...

Both systems are used at the University of Hamburg now...HamNoSys is in
the Linguistics department, and SignWriting is in the Deaf Education
department...Last November, the Das Zeichen journal published at the
University, featured an 11-page article on SignWriting written by
teacher Stefan Woehrmann...It is posted on the web in German:

Das Zeichen 2003 Article
http://www.SignWriting.org/archive/docs2/sw0125-DE-DasZeichen-2003.pdf

I am struggling with translating it into English...If there is anyone
who speaks German, who would be willing to help me with the
translation, I would be grateful. Stefan is too busy to be able to do
this, so anyone's help would be appreciated... Val ;-)



>> Antonio Carlos da Rocha Costa wrote:
>>  Also, it is important to understand that SignWriting and HamNoSys are
>> not alternatives for the same purpose. They are complementary, useful
>> for
>> different purposes, and to get a clear picture of such
>> complementarity is
>> also important, for the best profit of the development of sign
>> language
>> processing systems.

---------------------

Sandy Fleming wrote:
> This is interesting. I thought they wre just two different writing
> systems
> for sign languages? What is the difference? Sandy Fleming

--------------------


Daniel Noelpp wrote:
> I hope you can go to the next workshop! :-)
>
> HamNoSys uses different symbols but like the Latin alphabet one after
> another. It is good for machine processing, like for signing avatars
> and machine translation applications, but, with some training, still
> rather easy to read and write, but not as easy as Sutton SignWriting.
>
> Pro: Sequential writing (and not depending on space like Sutton
> SignWriting)
> Contra: More difficult to understand
>
> That's how I understood it. :-)
>
> Daniel
>