Shane's Glowing Intro

[Stuart Thiessen]

In ASL, sometimes space can be mirrored and sometimes it is fixed. For 
example, if I am referring to North, South, East, or West, the 
direction must remain the same. I cannot simply mirror the entire sign. 
The movement must go in the proper direction. Usually, this means if I 
know where North, South, East, and West are, then I sign that directly. 
If however, I don't know where North, South, East, or West are located, 
then I sign it as if I have the map of the US in front of me (that's 
how I was taught). Other directional signing will also be affected. If 
I mean go forward and enter the room on your left, mirroring would put 
the room on the right.

That's what I have at the moment. I will look for more examples later 
if I can find them.

Thanks,

Stuart

On Jan 14, 2007, at 18:16, Jonathan wrote:

>
>
>  Charles Butler wrote:In teaching SW I have had lefties and righties 
> in my classes, and part of the difficulty sometimes is that the 
> lefties have gotten so used to mirroring, that trying to get them to 
> write down their own hands instead of everyone else's is a challenge.
>>
>>   Now, in the long term, I suppose a button in sign text that could 
>> take an entire sign, and reverse the image to left hand prime 
>> production would be ideal, that is a challenge for a programmer to 
>> work on, as it requires a full understanding of the whole production 
>> of a sign and reversing everything directionally if it is a personal 
>> sign and not one pointing at an object not present (like setting up 
>> multiple people).  Doing that will require a root understanding of 
>> the grammar of an utterance, and that will be another hurdle to jump 
>> over.
>>
>
>      I am a computer programmer and am learning SignWritting.  I was 
> thinking about what you wrote about mirroring a sign.  It seems to me 
> that flipping each symbol within the SignText rectangle then moving it 
> to the horizontal distance from the left side of the rectangle that 
> equals the distance between the right most edge of the symbol and the 
> right hand side of the square, any sign should be able to be 
> mirrored.  Of course then we would also have to pass the signs from 
> the right-lane to the left-lane and vice versa.  Your comment suggests 
> that some signs might not mirror properly doing it this way.  I was 
> wondering if you could think of any concrete examples.
>      To change from "receptive" to "expressive"  I believe that it 
> would require changing the fill for the hand after mirroring the sign.
>
>  What do you think?
>
>  Jonathan
>>
>>   I learned SW when it was "receptive" 20 years ago, writing down the 
>> other person's hands, like actually copying a videotape and writing 
>> down with the right hand of the other person on the left, and the 
>> left hand on the right.  We did that for more than 5 years until the 
>> Deaf said "expressive" sign is the better way to write as one can 
>> always write one's own hands when no one else is there.
>>
>>   Changing in my own head from "mirror" to "expressive" has been just 
>> as much of a challenge.
>>
>>   Charles Butler
>>
>>
>>   Charles
>>
>>
>> Pauline Roberts <capyboppy at ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>>   Thanks for the warm welcome Val.
>>
>> I think I need to clarify though the difficulties I mean regarding 
>> the left
>> handed issues. When I was learning the guitar, to move on from basic
>> chords I needed to find a chord book that had the chord boxes. I don't
>> know if people are familiar with these, bout they are a square box 
>> like
>> grid, which represents the frets on the neck of the guitar, and also 
>> the
>> six strings. You then have black or white dots representing where the
>> fingers go. This has always been a problem as a leftie just can't 
>> look at
>> the box and instantly know where the fingers go. Especially if a 
>> complex
>> chord. We either have to keep going over each "dot" over and over 
>> again in
>> our heads til it sinks in where it would be, or if it is thin paper, 
>> look
>> through the reverse side to see. All this took time and was 
>> frustrating and
>> confusing for the learning. I see a similar problem with Sign writing 
>> that is already written down in the normal right handed format, as 
>> again, I
>> should imagine everything will need to be turned in reverse during the
>> learning process. Like you say, writing it down by the leftie in a 
>> left
>> handed format would be no problem. I do remember when learning new
>> vocabulary at level 1 BSL, I would write down brief descriptions at 
>> the
>> side of any words I thought I would have a problem remembering. This 
>> was
>> fine until some of the others saw what I was doing and asked if they 
>> could
>> borrow/photo copy my notes. When they realised the descriptions were 
>> left
>> handed it totally confused them and most of them decided to leave it, 
>> as it
>> would be more work having to convert everything to the opposite:-( No 
>> easy
>> answer I suppose!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> -- 
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