[sw-l] Re:

[dparvaz at MAC.COM]

I'm not sure that Gallaudet's linguistic policies are a model of
cultural sensitivity. The campus crawls with sim-comming hearing people
who need interpreters to tach their classes. Last time I read their
policy, the words "American Sign Language" did not appear in that
configuration.

So Phooey on Gally, at least in that in that respect.

Whose writing system really comes from within? Ours? It came from Rome,
which came from Greece, which Came from Phoenicia. Russian? One cleric,
adapting Greek and Coptic (or Hebrew). Cherokee? One guy. Navajo? One
white guy. Korean? The Chinese, and one king. Writing was usually the
province of one social class, so much so simply writing granted the
writer some of the benefits of that class. The whole business was
democratized much later.

I don't know if the Deaf will adopt SW or any other orthography, I
choose to use it because it suits my scholarly purposes, not because I
want to play Atatürk with the Deaf. But this talk about how it has to
come from the inside is not necessarily true.

Food for thought, at any rate.

Cheers,

Dan.