Ethiopian Manual Alphabet(EMA)

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
July 22, 2005

Charles and Eyasu -
I love the Ethiopian Manual Alphabet, but I can see now that I am  
going to have to start adding the symbols to the IMWA officially and  
not burden you with the job of trying to temporarily construct  
them...they are really quite complex and very very different than the  
handshapes of western signed languages...I can see that the next  
decade for me, will be to add all of the hand positions used in  
signed languages of the Middle-East and Far-East and Africa...They  
are different than the western handshapes and I am so glad that Eyasu  
joined the List to teach us about this...smile...

So I want to thank you, Charles and Eyasu, for trying so hard!! I  
hope you can write other signs, while you are waiting for me to add  
the symbols...I hope to spend the month of August adding more symbols  
to the IMWA, so it won't be until September, before you will have  
access to any of these new symbols...

Smile...But we are making progress nonetheless!

Val ;-)

-------------------


On Jul 22, 2005, at 1:25 PM, Charles Butler wrote:

I have constructed some which are now in the Ethiopian list, one uses  
the extended middle finger on top of an E, one is an extension of the  
R variant handshape (index finger on top of middle finger with an  
extra finger crooked onto the square.  I used the construction pieces  
for those.

Some of the others I can't construct with the pieces available.

Charles

Valerie Sutton <sutton at signwriting.org> wrote:
SignWriting List
July 22, 2005

On Jul 22, 2005, at 12:09 AM, eyasu tamene wrote:
Would you point me where I can get the new symbols which are not
available in the sign puddle?

Hello Eyasu and Charles...
Temporary construction of symbols can be done by clicking on the
Limbs icon at the top right...You will find little finger pieces and
arm lines there etc...Then you can piece it together...

These can only be temporary, however, because a constructed handshape
cannot be sorted by SSS and cannot be used to search etc...so I plan
to get to your new handshapes and put them in the IMWA officially as
soon as I can... Val ;-)



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20050722/65267596/attachment.htm>