[sw-l] Spelling of ASL Wallet (retry #3)

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 16, 2005

Hello Everyone!
Thanks for all your discussions about standardized spellings and
dictionaries!

No one is saying that an official published dictionary will have 8
spellings! But the SignPuddle Community dictionaries are not official
publications. They are places on the web where we can play with signs
to see what works best, and later, after some use, official published
dictionaries can be built from the signs that are entered in the
SignPuddle Community Dictionaries.

I am glad you like the SignPuddle Community dictionaries, Kimberley.
They a special and fun place to learn!

I hope I am using the terminology correctly, Steve? Steve has been
building a new SignPuddle 2.0, which will include some new features,
including the opportunity to differentiate between Community
SignPuddles and Published SignPuddles. The Published SignPuddles (or
whatever they will be called) will be official and frozen and
uneditable, except for a few private editors who build them in a
private SignPuddle...but meanwhile, no matter what, we will always
have the Community SignPuddles, open to the general public, where we
can play and experiment...I love that idea! As Steve says...Come
splash in a SignPuddle! It sounds like a child splashing and
playing...smile...and when we write new signs, it feels a little like
being a child again, seeing the world from a new perspective...an
adventure really...

So this is a process, and not the final publication of anything....

The Axial motion (wrist flexing symbols) that are being used in some
of the current experimental spellings for the ASL sign for WALLET, is
a new usage of the Axial motion that has never existed before. Stefan
and Ingvild are correct that the usage is new and different and if we
are going to use it this way, we need to differentiate between how we
write Wrist Flexing that does NOT press against something, and Wrist
Flexing that DOES press against something...

And Charles, it has nothing to do with wrong or right. I like the way
you are writing it. Thank you for this unique input. But your new
usage of the axial motion symbols has to be documented. Maybe you
didn't realize that you were using these symbols differently than
they were defined in the Lessons textbook? Nothing wrong with that,
but it is true that this is something new. As the inventor of the
system, I now have the burden to define how those wrist flexing
symbols will be used when we have the Press Symbols with it...And I
cannot decide on a standard spelling, until the symbols themselves
are correctly defined...

So since the writing rules for that issue haven't even been developed
yet, certainly we are not at the stage yet, to determine a world
standard for a spelling!

I am going to try to define the Wrist Flexing symbols now, plus
answer Anny's new questions etc...

Thanks for all your great messages, everyone!

Val ;-)