IRELAND History of SignWriting in Dublin area

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
November 7, 2005

Hello Thierry, Kathleen, Shane, and especially Ingvild!

It is fun to read your messages about SignWriting in Ireland! I have  
the wonderful and important task, right now, to read-through Ingvild  
Roald's new textbook on SignWriting...it has not gone to press  
yet...and I am enjoying editing it, and it is a very good book, Ingvild!

Ingvild was the first person to teach SignWriting in Ireland (that I  
know of)...

SignWriting began in Dublin around 1994, with three groups...Ingvild  
taught the group that Patrick Matthews worked with, at the Linguistic  
Institute. They had a big project around 1995, and there were a group  
of Deaf people who learned SignWriting from Ingvild...they used  
SignWriter DOS on computers in a group...and then two books were  
published from that research...and the second book, which is a good  
one, has a dictionary in the back with SignWriting next to life-like  
illustrations, and that dictionary was written by Patrick  
Matthews...I will try to write a more formal history of SignWriting  
in Ireland later, after I finish reading Ingvild's new textbook in  
Norwegian and Norwegian Sign Language...

And yes...5 people came to visit me after the last Deaf Way  
Conference at Gallaudet...three from Dublin and one from Switizerland- 
and one from Norway, and Patrick Matthews was one of the three from  
Dublin...they stayed here as my guests for two weeks and I edited  
Patrick's book for his dissertation...Happy you met Patrick, Kathleen  
and Thierry!

So there has been over a decade of work with SignWriting in Ireland,  
before we met Shane in Northern Ireland in 2004-2005...

Maybe next time Thierry, you can discuss this with Patrick...I bet  
Patrick will be glad to know you use SignWriting too...Val ;-)

PS. Here is an old history write-up on SignWriting in Ireland that  
needs to be updated:

HISTORY OF SIGNWRITING IN IRELAND

Group 1: The Linguistics Institute of Ireland, directed by Eoghan Mac  
Aogain, had many linguistic projects. One of them, The Irish Sign  
Language Project, directed by Patrick Matthews, was funded in 1994 by  
the Irish government. SignWriting was used to create Irish Sign  
Language dictionaries. Ingvild Roald from Norway taught a SignWriting  
workshop to the group in 1994. They presented a proposal to the Irish  
government for a continuation of the project in 1995.

In Autumn, 1996, the Irish Sign Language Project came to a close. Two  
very impressive volumes were published, one on the history of the  
Deaf Community in Ireland, and the second on the language. The second  
publication included a dictionary of ISL in life-like illustrations  
along side of SignWriting...by Patrick Matthews. As far as we know,  
that was the first publication to use SignWriting in Ireland.

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

Group 2: The Irish Deaf Society, directed by Helena Saunders, a  
separate group in Dublin, also used Sign Writing. They made plans for  
over 20 Deaf signers to learn SignWriting. They were disappointed  
when more funding could not be found.


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

Group 3: The Sign Language Association of Ireland, directed at the  
time by Hugh Buckley,  began to use the SignWriter Computer Program,  
starting in the Fall, 1995.

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

Group 4: A decade later, in 2004-2005, interest started to stir in  
Northern Ireland...I will let Shane accurately tell us how that  
happened... ;-))))

And the rest is history to be written!! smile...

Val ;-)
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