AW: [sw-l] CZJ - Czech sign language: SKOLA (school) - video

[Charles Butler]

I think our disagreement on both hand shape and essential movement is caused by internal versus external viewpoints.
 
The original writer is Czech and knows the sign and can watch both the video and his own arms and sees an essential turning of the wrist as well as a movement, and knows the handshape used.
 
An external party, speaking from a different language, who does not know the sign in everyday use in Czech, can, at the most, take a guess from the video.
 
Native signers of a language know best, though non-native speakers can certainly help edit what they write.  I acted as an editor in Libras, a language I am learning, while in Brazil, and often had to stop, look at what a native signer had written, and duplicate it carefully on my hands before I would rewrite it, but only with a very careful discussion with the signer to ensure that what I saw was what was being signed.
 
This is my word of caution on our discussions.
 
If the handshape that is being discussed is a bent hand, then the movement is a bent hand.  If a viewer sees a flat hand with the back of the hand to the right, they are seeing the same orientation, but disagreeing on the handshape.  The query then becomes, is this a critical difference in the language of discussion".  That can then become quite productive as a separate discussion.  
 
Various layers of linguistic parsing can result, as is happening on this list.  However, we should always defer to the native signer of his or her own language as the final authority on what handshape is actually being used.
 
Charles


Stefan Wöhrmann <stefanwoehrmann at GEBAERDENSCHRIFT.DE> wrote:
Hi Honza, Tomas, Shane, Valerie, Charles ... sw -list


today I looked for the fist time at this "skola -video" - 

There are - as always many more variations how to write the sign in SW. 

Looking at Shane's comment ("crap and shit" )- I had to smile. 

Well if you would accept that the signer is actually doing a lot with his
mouth - (smile) you would not identify this sign as " a total crap" -- or
"total shit" - 

Dr Penny Boyes Braem from Switzerland made me very attentive to these
"Mundbilder" 

So obviously the sign that is shown in this video is a combination of kind
of "voiceless articulation movements" which can be written with my
Mundbildschrift - 


looking at the hand and at the moovement I can imagine a different spelling
... 

So it depends who should get the information. Students who are on their way
to use bilingual materials in order to develop Spoken Language skills will
definitely take advantage out of a very detailed spelling - .

Once they know the terms in SL and Spoken Languages a less detailed
Mundbildschrift would do it - if there are no similar signs - which can lead
to confusion. But that depends on the scribes knowledge of the given SL and
his intentions. 


Stefan ;-)) 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
[mailto:owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu] Im Auftrag von Valerie Sutton
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 18. August 2005 23:26
An: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
Betreff: Re: [sw-l] CZJ - Czech sign language: SKOLA (school) - video

SignWriting List
August 18, 2005

Shane Ó hEorpa wrote:
> In British Sign Language, that sign mean "a total crap" or "a total 
> shit" if
> done once - if twice, it mean "it is rubbish" or "it is crap"

Great. This means that you can copy the sign for Skola in the Czech 
SignPuddle and paste it into the BSL SignPuddle, and change the name 
of the sign, and you don't have to re-write it! That will add one 
more sign to the BSL SignPuddle! Val ;-)

PS. List members...If you need instructions on how to paste signs 
from one SignPuddle to another, just ask me!
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