[sw-l] BSL Reading Test :)

[Sandy Fleming]

Val wrote:

> Regarding contact...
> There are different theories on that...the Danes decided to only write
> contact when a sign could be misunderstood without it...which meant
> that most Touch stars were eliminated, because we can understand signs
> whether they touch or not most of the time...like the ASL sign for
> DEAF...if someone skimmed the surface of the face, not really touching
> it, we would still understand the sign...meanwhile other writers
> outside of Denmark write the contact stars no matter what...so the
> Editors of each dictionary will have to think through what their
> decisions will be on these spelling standards...

Funny you should bring this up. With regard to handwriting more easily I was
looking at some signs that were very "busy" (ie a lot of movements and
contacts even though the sign wasn't complicated to make in real life) and
wondering how to make a reasonably neat rule to help people to decide what
to leave out.

I agree that yes, often contacts may simply be left out - often the position
of two symbols will suggest that one is touching the other, often the
movement of a symbol sill suggest that it's brushing or rubbing a nearby
symbol.

But contacts are usually only small, easy to write symbols - I was wondering
if it was posible to go further and remove all contact and movement
altogether, and just leave the head and handshape to express the sign.

Firstly I realised that this won't work very easily with directional verbs
or classifier-like signs - the contact and movement is often an
indespensible part of the meaning.

However, there are many common signs which are pretty much fixed - they
don't really vary in any way, or the variation is in the facial expression.
I thought erhaps that those sort of signs might still be easily recognisable
and unambiguous even if all the contact and movement information were
completely omitted.

I've tried writing some common signs which are similar (all of them have
just one hand, at the side the face) to see how much umbiguity was
introduced. I find that, given the clue that they're familiar everyday signs
and the movement and contact information is omitted, it seems possible for a
person familiar with BSL to see which sign is intended in nearly all cases.

Of course someone who doesn't use BSL won't be able to see exactly how these
are pronounced. Moreover, I'm not suggesting that this sort of spelling
should be added to dictionaries (unless widely adopted as standard) - just
suggesting it for handwriting purposes.

I wonder if a BSL user (Trevor?) would be so kind as to have a go at trying
to read these signs, and letting me know what he thinks they must mean?
Although all of them are different and so could be used as long as everybody
is familiar with them, I'd be interested to know just how easy it is for a
BSLer who hasn't seen them before to see what they mean.

(You may notice that due to my recent explorations in handwriting, I'm now
writing a lot these handshapes without lifting my pen off the page - I find
that a good rule is to start at the tip of the index finger or thumb  :)

Sandy
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