Ethiopia New Signs!!

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 27, 2005

> On Jun 27, 2005, at 4:15 AM, eyasu tamene wrote:
> I tried 'Greeting' again I wonder if I could get it now.  I  
> inquired you regarding the more complex ESL alphabet. I tried to  
> describe you verbally last time. How am I going to describe them?   
> My quiestion in short is- Are all the signs in the Sign Puddles  
> represent SL of the world?

Hello Eyasu and Everyone!
I am sorry I did not answer your other questions about the other  
symbols used in the Ethiopian Manual Alphabet. The answer is YES...we  
should have all of the symbols used in 30 signed languages. At least  
that is what we are trying to accomplish. So for example, in the  
American Manual Alphabet we use 26 symbols, but we have close to 200  
handshapes in SignPuddle and many of those are not used in ASL at  
all, but they are used in other signed languages around the world. So  
each country has to pick and choose the symbols they need to write  
with. And if the handshape really isn't there, then I add that new  
handshape to the symbolset myself...and so we keep building more and  
more handshapes...

I have trouble understanding word-descriptions. Can you post  
illustrations of your Ethiopian Manual Alphabet? Then I can find the  
symbols for you...but reading the words is hard for me to be sure it  
is what you want...So either pictures or drawings or video is what we  
need to write something properly, since Ethiopian Sign Language is  
new for us...

Maybe you have a little card that shows the Manual Alphabet easily?  
Can you scan that into the computer and post it to the SignWriting  
List? Many thanks!

Val ;-)
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