[sw-l] ITALY QUESTION...Top View or Front View?

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
April 27, 2005

Val wrote:
>> And choosing one over the other is not wrong, just as long as it is
>> accurate, but there is a psychology or a feeling behind some
>> choices...

Barbara Pennacchi wrote:
>
> We've had this feeling over and over, so I'm not surprised. However, I
> hoped there would already be some kind of consensus/rules, for an
> easier readability across different sign languages...

Val answers:
Yes. It would be great to have a rule. Recently the phychology of
SignSpellings came up with the sign for Switzerland...There are two
correct ways one could write that sign, and I had chosen one
SignSpelling, and then others informed me that the psycology felt
better with the other SignSpelling...so I then changed that sign in a
bunch of diagrams!!

Why does this happen? Because I only invented the symbols themselves,
and other people know their own signed languages...I have no right to
tell them how to write their language...all I can do is  teach the
symbols themselves, and others have to decide what Spellings feel
better, based on their knowledge of the language...

Perhaps in time we can get rules for some choices of Spellings that
appear to be chosen more than others, but that has to be based on
studying writings from several signed languages...SignWriting is a
naturally-evolving written form, at least to a certain
extext...smile...so if you write a lot of Italian signs, after awhile,
certain patterns of spellings evolve and then rules can be
established...

>
>> so the best thing is to write a sign in several different ways...the
>> same sign...but written from two different viewpoints...and then show
>> that writing to Deaf people, or native signers, to see which
>
> It's a good suggestion, I'll tell them... it is just that our primary
> target (have Deaf native signers capable of transcribing signed texts
> in SW, for more accuracy and to introduce them in the field of
> linguistics research) what with the fallacies and inadequacies of both
> the old paper manual and its translation, then this, then that...
> well, it seems a bit fuzzier than before. *groan* :-)

Write some signs and post that specific sign to the SignWriting List in
.gif or .jpg or .png format, and ask me how I would write it...then I
will show you how to write that specific sign...and if you have a
little video clips that would be great too...we can write from those
video clips...

You might enjoy this document, which you can download, that is about
SignSyllables and the way our spellings are devised...Maybe this will
be of interest to your writing group:

SignSpelling Guidelines 2004
http://www.signwriting.org/archive/docs2/sw0145-SignSpelling-2004.pdf

But post specific signs to our List with questions on how to write
it...that will help a lot!

Val;-)