[sw-l] Handwriting and idiosyncratic SW

[Antonio Carlos da Rocha Costa]

Dear James,


   Of course, I fully agree with your statements.

   But, disregarding historical inheritance and the weird features it 
produced, I hope you agree that the normal use of the latin alphabet is 
more directed toward phonological (phonemic) writing than toward a 
phonetic one.

   I've added another illustration, maybe more clear than the previous 
one, about what I'm talking about. Two equivalent, valid, ways to 
produce the sign HOUSE, that can be perfectly made distinct in 
SignWriting, but that probably would not both be needed in a more 
standardized way of writing LIBRAS.

   This example is more close to what I meant by the need of going into 
a phonological writing, where details could be left out a common 
agreement about what to simply in the written form of the sign.

   Of course, going back to the fully detailed phonetic writing, 
whenever needed, would always be possible, at any moment.

   All the best,

   Antônio Carlos





> I am not so certain that English writing omits irrelevancies.  Indeed, it
> seems to hang on to somewhat confusing spellings out of respect to history
> and tradition  -- hence "night" which I believe sounded more like the German
> "nacht" at some point (I am merely guessing at the German spelling), or
> "knight" which sounded more like K-NICHT.
> 
> What maintains English spelling has been the publication of dictionaries.
> Thus, as word pronunciations have changed over time and place, spelling by
> and large has not.  It seems to me that sign languages set down in SW will
> likewise have standardized spellings.
> 
> More to the point, the beauty of SW is that it is predictable  -- and new
> readers can learn the code and predict fairly closely how a sign ought to be
> "spelled".  One can develop a shorthand code or adopt convenient
> abbreviations, but I should think that the popularity and utility of the
> system is grounded in its adherence to a code for the sake of
> predictability.
> 
> -- James Shepard-Kegl
> 

-- 
Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa
Escola de Informática - UCPel
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