Sign Proccessing Software

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 16, 2004

Angus B. Grieve-Smith wrote:
>  Why not just a word processor for sign languages?  Sign languages
> have words too.

SW List, and Angus!
This is just a matter of terminology. I believe we discussed this years
ago too ;-)

With the above suggestion, your terminology is defining the word WORD
to mean any language's...
But for almost 30 years now, in the SignWriting community, the
terminology we have been using is slightly different...

WORD = spoken languages
SIGN = signed languages

So when we say: Deaf children in Albuquerque are learning to write both
signs and words...It is based on that definition. So based on that
terminology, Microsoft Word is for spoken languages, but if there were
an equivalent, Microsoft Sign would be for signed languages...

And your phrase would be something like: Sign languages have signs, and
spoken languages have words...

And for me to change that now would mean that all our written documents
in English, would have to change...so I plan to continue to use the
same terminology...

In SignWriter Java, for example, there are three typing modes: Sign
Mode, Fingerspelling Mode, and Word Mode...

The term spoken languages was too long to fit on the screen - ha!...so
Word Mode was shorter...

I plan to post a long list of SignWriting terminology on the web in the
future, to clarify these things...

Thanks for your input -

Val ;-)