[sw-l] New Signs in BSL Dictionary

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
March 16, 2005

Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa from Northern Ireland wrote:
> I thought the BSL sign for "house" came from ASL because of the "h"
> shape -
> in the old days, people used my first sign for "house".

Hello Everyone!
Thank you for informing us about that...that is very interesting! It
will be fun to see what other signs have influenced each other between
ASL and BSL too...

The ASL sign does not use an H handshape, however...but you are right
that the movements are similar to the BSL sign...

I feel I should explain something about me...I have a different job
that you all have...I am the "symbol person", but you all are the "sign
people"....You know your own signs and need to try to write with those
symbols....so you are the knowledgable people about your own
languages...and obviously it would be impossible for me to know 30
signed languages! So instead, I teach the symbols, and then you try to
write your language...and then from a symbol perspective, I give you
feedback on what you wrote..I can show you the movements you wrote, and
then you can see if that is what you wanted...but that is not because I
know your signs...it is because the symbols can be used to write
foreign signed languages, and I am reading what you wrote from the
Movement Writing perspective....meaning the generic movement
perspective that is not language, but gesture writing...and that
becomes SignWriting, as it is used more and more by the signers in your
country...

So you may assume that I know ASL well...but not at all!! I do not
teach ASL, nor have I studied ASL...The first signed language I wrote
was Danish Sign Language, and I never knew how to sign Danish Sign
Language...I wrote it in SignWriting by watching a video of a Deaf
person signing....So I personally never write any signed language,
without viewing the signs, either with a signer standing in front of
me, or from video...because I am not a native signer...

That is why years ago, I hired 10 Deaf native ASL signers to help
create the dictionaries we have right now, in ASL...

So although I sign, I personally am no expert in ASL! Nor do I want to
be...I leave that to others ;-))

Val ;-)