FSL (Filipino SL) dictionary

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
March 3, 2004

Nana Dumitra in the Philippines wrote:
> It has been about two months since you all last heard from me – our 
> children were sick and there were a lot of other things coming up. I 
> kept reading all the posts and it was very interesting to follow the 
> different subjects (I especially enjoyed your input Stuart about 
> Manually Coded Languages and the whole discussion on how to spell 
> „grace“ and the gender difference in Irish Signlanguage was something 
> I never thought even existed, but – it makes so much sense! It is easy 
> to see why it would happen.) – So, even though you have not heard from 
> me, we are still very much interested in SW and are also still working 
> on our FSL (Filipino SL) dictionary (at least the signs from our area, 
> we are already aware of at least three major dialects, maybe different 
> SLs?).


Dear SW List, and Nana in the Philippines!
Great to hear from you again. I hope your family's illnesses are 
improving, and yes...I bet there are many dialects of Fillipino Sign 
Language...There are different dialects in all signed languages, but 
especially in countries where there are few standards in the 
educational system. Oftentimes dialects are connected to specific 
schools...But when it comes to writing these dialects, you can 
differentiate between them in the dictionary, or you can write just one 
dialect, with the hopes that the writing will become standard, based 
around that dialect...Usually this just happens naturally...whatever 
you put in your dictionary becomes better known...

Val ;-)