Mundbildschrift and Mundbild ;-)

[K.J. Boal]

Hi Val,
I'd love to see that show!  I hope you do get permission to show it!
KJ


>From: "Valerie Sutton" <signwriting at MAC.COM>
>Reply-To: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>To: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>Subject: Re: [sw-l] Mundbildschrift and Mundbild ;-)
>Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 21:51:46 -0700
>
>SignWriting List
>May 13, 2007
>
>Hi Kelly Jo!
>This inspires me to try to get permission from the German TV station  to 
>show everyone the half hour show taken in Stefan's Deaf classroom  at the 
>Osnabruck School for the Deaf. It is an amazing program. It  has German 
>captions on the screen, and because I know a tiny bit of  German, and 
>because I know the subject matter, I was able to  understand exactly what 
>was being explained and by the end of the  show, I felt like yelling BRAVO! 
>What a wonderful teacher. His  students were truly having fun and really 
>learning...
>
>The mixture of learning to sign, learning to read SignWriting, and  also 
>using SpeechWriting to learn to speak, was an amazing and  flexible way of 
>teaching. Some of Stefan's students have started to  speak better because 
>of his application of SpeechWriting...and in a  school where other 
>classrooms use no signing at all...the teachers  look and see his success 
>and wonder what his secret is...well...I say  it is because he inspired his 
>students to reach excellence in  different ways...and SpeechWriting, 
>although new, may be helpful for  some students...it depends on the student 
>and the culture of course...
>
>It will be interesting to see if someone in the English speaking  world 
>will apply the Woehrmann SpeechWriting system to English  someday...
>
>When I worked at NTID for 6 months in 1979, an oralist at NTID  
>(yes...there are oralists there) asked me to try to write the  movements of 
>speech from a video tape...I have a tiny example of what  I did with that 
>on the web:
>
>http://www.signwriting.org/library/history/hist004.html
>
>scroll down to the bottom of that page to see the old diagram...
>
>BUT...the Woehrmann SpeechWriting system is much better and really  
>used...I am glad Stefan developed it...
>
>Val ;-)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On May 13, 2007, at 9:32 PM, K.J. Boal wrote:
>
>>I believe I read somewhere that Alexander Graham Bell had actually  
>>developed a SpeechWriting type of system, where anyone could look  at it 
>>and see how the mouth, tongue, nose and even throat worked  together to 
>>produce sounds.  The story goes (if I remember  correctly) that he 
>>demonstrated this system at some kind of  Exhibition; he left the stage 
>>while his assistant wrote several  suggestions from the audience.  When he 
>>came back on stage, he  easily read the first few sentences, but he 
>>couldn't make sense of  the last one.  He started to read the sounds, even 
>>though he didn't  know what he was doing... and did a perfect impression 
>>of wood  being sawn!
>>
>>I've wanted to take a look at the system ever since, but I haven't  been 
>>able to find anything else written about it.  I wish I knew  whether it 
>>really worked as well as that story would suggest...   anyway, Stefan's 
>>system looks pretty understandable to me - at  least for sounds that are 
>>pronounced at or near the front of the  mouth!
>>
>>I'm just not sure about the sounds produced way in the back of the  
>>throat, like G and K, or how voicing is represented.  I also notice  that 
>>the R in "Speechwriting" and the OE sound in "Woehrmann" are  represented 
>>by the same symbol... I would be surprised if they were  actually the same 
>>sound.  But representing the retroflexed R that  we use in English (and in 
>>every English accent I'm aware of, we  would actually pronounce the R in a 
>>word like "Speechwriting"  because it comes before a vowel)... I'm not 
>>sure how you would do  that.  Just my initial impression...
>>
>>KJ
>
>

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