[sw-l] Simpler documents for beginners...

[nemery at U.WASHINGTON.EDU]

hi Val - your timing is great in pointing these out - I read some of them when I was starting to
teach myself SignWriting (like Sandy, I printed out the big manual too, but left out a lot of
pages).  But I hadn't noticed the "lecture handouts" and they're perfect becuase on Wednesday
I'm doing a talk and turning in a paper about writing signed languages for my "History of Writing
Systems" class.  None of the other writing systems we've looked at are less than 500 years old,
so it's interesting to be able to talk about one that's being worked out in our lifetimes!

I have been trying to transcribe a video tape but haven't arranged permission from the signer yet
to post it.  I could send you some of the transcription if I could figure out how to send the
graphics through e-mail - I am unfortunately easily intimidated by technology.  It is being
written in Signwriter Java since I don't know how else to be able to write something in which I
can store classifier constructions, which wouldn't be in Signpuddle dictionaries as they are only
created and meaningful in context.

By the way, some of us linguists came to SignWriting of our own accord, because it shares the
visual and spatial clarity that is so fundamental to signed languages.

Nancy


On Sun, 6 Mar 2005, Valerie Sutton wrote:

> SignWriting List
> March 6, 2005
>
> Dear SW List, Charles, Sandy, Trevor, Shane, Stefan and so many others!!
> Thank you for this important discussion...I was amazed to read that Sandy
> started learning SignWriting from our thick textbook...I guess that does
> happen...but for us here, we start with reading SignWriting literature...
>
> Anyway...Sandy...regarding starting with some simpler documents...here is the
> way I choose what to download...
>
> First, I go to this web page:
>
> SignWriting Document Archives
> http://signwriting.org/archive/thumbnails/index.html
>
> and I click through page after page until I find the document I want to
> download...
>
> In your case, I would suggest
>
> Documents 7, or 8, or 9, or 10....
>
> Download 7 on this page...
> http://signwriting.org/archive/thumbnails/00002.html
>
> ...is a document I use to give lecture demonstrations...
>
> Or Document 8 is a little summary of some important parts of Lessons in
> SignWriting textbook...It is called About SignWriting....
>
> These documents are always here for everyone to download anytime...there are
> hundreds on the web, and in time there will be thousands of documents I am
> sure...so re-visit the Archives regularly to see new documents...
>
> Val ;-)
>
>
>