Flying Bird

[Sandy Fleming]

Hi Stefan, Val and list!

Yes, as the pictures of the hands show, this is the movement I was looking
for - perfect!

My original handshape, that Val asked about, was intended to be the Group 9
handshape from the manual, described as "Thumb Index Open Hinge - Hinge
Opens More" - but I see now that I got the shading wrong and it's not the
right handshape for this.

Is it acceptable in writing, when showing a repeated movement, to just draw
as many handshapes as required? Or is this sort of thing not normal in sign
languages?

The Spelling Guide suggests that signs should be written as 3 syllables, or
4 at most, whereas this could be said to have seven or eight. Is that OK?

Anyway, thanks for all the help, though I'd no idea there would be so much
discussion! - it's really made me think - and especially Stephan's
illustration of 3 spellings with identical effect! A bit like "pair", "pare"
and "pear" in English, I suppose  :)

Stefan wrote:

>> Here are my three gifs - showing different birds - flying - .. ;-)) one
of
>> them should be the one, the children had in mind -
>> What do you think Sandy - and Valerie??

I'd say spelling a2 is clearest but a1 is easiest to write by hand. I think
we should expect handwriting style to be different from printing style
anyway, so that's OK. At any rate they're all easy to read, where mine was
completely mistaken!

I'll be looking out for other things like this where there's a repeated
movement between two handshapes - swimming octopus, anyone?  :>

I honestly don't know whether I ever sign this way or not myself, with the
way sign language can get quite graphic and creative sometimes. But thanks
to SignWriting making me think about it, I can watch out for it in future!

Sandy Fleming
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