AW: [sw-l] Some more questions...

[Stuart Thiessen]

Mea culpa!  I had been under the impression that Don Newkirk was deaf.
That was why I said that.  Sorry for the error on my part. I understand
that it was a rough time for you.

I have not seen any deaf who have seriously advocated it.  I have only
seen hearing people mention it to me.  I know of one deaf person who
apparently learned about it from Sam.

Yes, I was mentioning Sam Supalla's school, but I haven't heard more
about it.  I only heard about it from the hearing person who tried to
convince me that SignFont was a better system to use. :)

Sorry for dredging up the bad memories.  Now we return you to your
regularly scheduled SignWriting instructional program.  ;)

Thanks,

Stuart

On Apr 28, 2005, at 2:36 PM, Valerie Sutton wrote:

> SignWriting List
> April 28, 2005
>
> Stuart Thiessen wrote:
>> Hi, Stefan.  SignFont is a little used notation system devised by a
>> deaf person here in the US. It was specifically designed for ASL.
>
> Stuart - whoever told you that was misinformed...SignFont was not
> designed by a Deaf person! Believe me...I was there. Who told you
> that?
>
> It was devised at Emerson and Stern computer firm, with the help of
> several hearing linguists who refused to have Deaf people involved
> with the development...There were around 30 people in the meeting,
> where they announced that they did not want to work with our DAC Deaf
> staff...and there were meeting participants, such as Ed Klima and
> others who defended SignWriting and was upset by this, but we had to
> leave, because they did not respect the work we had done for the past
> decade...So the whole grant that funded SignFont, was originally
> written with SignWriting in the grant and the funding was supposed to
> be used for SignWriting...and instead they tried to re-invent the
> wheel, and ignored all our hard work...and that ended up being called
> SignFont, and they did not involve the Deaf community until after the
> SignFont system was invented...
>
>
>> It had a few symbols for face expression, but had the same
>> limitations as the Stokoe system.  It didn't make any distinctions
>> about palm orientation. For example, the ASL signs for dessert and
>> date would be written exactly the same using the SignFont system. If
>> there was no such thing as SignWriting, SignFont would probably be
>> the system I would be using or tweaking.  But I am very thankful for
>> SignWriting because it is much better than the SignFont system ...
>> IMHO.
>
> Thank you for that, Stuart....
>
> SignFont would never have existed, if the linguistis had continued to
> use SignWriting on that computer project, as it already had been used
> for 6 months before...
>
> SignFont was not used with the Deaf Community until after it was
> developed. They then gave it to Don Newkirk, another hearing linguist,
> to try to promote it in Deaf Community...and then they  brought in
> some Deaf people at that time...one was named Brenda I believe, I
> cannot remember...but my Deaf staff would never touch it! My Deaf
> staff was furious!
>
>
>>
>> Right now, I only know of one school in Arizona that is using the
>> SignFont system. From what I understand, they are (or were) just
>> using it enough to introduce kids to English and then throwing it
>> away and only using English afterwards.  There used to be information
>> on the web, but now you can't even find information on the web.  I
>> really don't know of anyone who is using it actively.
>
> If you are referring to Sam Supalla's school, it is my understanding
> that the school lost their funding, or am I wrong? Is Sam Supalla
> still running the school? I thought it had closed...at least that is
> what Sam himself said in a presentation here in San Diego in March
> 2003...it was very costly program and that must have been hard on
> him...or perhaps he has re-established the school now?
>
> And they were not writing Sign Literature with SignFont in that school
> anyway...they were using it as a bridge to English, so the Deaf
> student would not end up with a way to read and write signs...so it
> was a different purpose...
>
> I need to get back to teaching SignWriting now...sorry if I seem
> nervous...SignFont was a very hard time for me...it was in 1985...But
> that also stimulated our developing SignWriter...We decided to develop
> our own computer program, and so we developed SignWriter //e for Apple
> and then SignWriter DOS...so indirectly hard times can stimulate
> wonderful inventions!
>
> Val ;-)
>
>
>
>