Who we are?/ How many?

Wed Feb 8 17:36:15 UTC 2012

SignWriting List
February 8, 2012

Hello Everyone!
It is so nice to see messages posted on the SignWriting List again. Thank you for posting, Claudia and Stefan and Madson -

And your English is excellent, Claudia - Your message was really good and very interesting for me to read - I am learning about your work in Italy from it, and thank you for telling us about the groups of people learning SignWriting in your area of Italy -

The world is a big place, isn't it?

Stefan works sooooo hard everyday with SignWriting and Mundbildschrift - no one could work harder - Talking about schools…did you know about Stefan Woehrmann's students at the Osnabrück School for the Deaf in Germany? Stefan taught a whole generation of Deaf students in SignWriting (GebaerdenSchrift) and he developed SpeechWriting (Mundbildschrift), with great success. His students trained with him for a decade and now they have graduated and moved on to other schools and they are successful Deaf young adults. And now Stefan has started training a new young classroom of new Deaf students, all learning Gebaerdenschrift and Mundbildschrift.

When you go to:

Who Uses SignWriting?
http://www.signwriting.org/about/who

Under Germany - you can read more about Stefan's work, which has now spread to the University of Hamburg and a school for the Deaf in Hamburg, with a new funded project  that is developing software specifically for the way Stefan teaches and uses SignWriting called the DELEGS SignWriting Editor - It coordinates with SignPuddle Online and it now can be used for both German Sign Language and also American Sign Language (thank you, Stefan, for this major gift to us). There is a link to the DELEGS software on the "SignWriting in Germany" web page.

SignWriting in Germany
http://www.signwriting.org/germany

I want you all to know that I miss our conversations very much, and I am also sorry that I have not had more time recently to update our web sites. Honza in the Czech Republic asked me to update the Czech web page because they are also using and researching and teaching SignWriting in the Czech Republic…I look forward to more time…as you all know I am caring for two elderly parents full time plus also trying my best to answer all the private emails - I really need a full-time assistant and I hope in time I can have that…Adam and I will be doing more work this summer, but right now, we are waiting for Steve to finish some truly wonderful new software and we are kind of in a holding pattern - I am working on taxes of all things!

But I did ship a box of donated books to Slovenia, for the school for the Deaf in Slovenia - I do not know if they have received their books yet, but they are already teaching and using SignWriting in Slovenia -

And Claudia, your work in Italy is something to be very proud of, and I think your description of "places where SignWriting is used" is a very good idea - Maybe later I can create another web page that discuss the projects that use SignWriting rather than the countries, because of course you are correct that countries are big places and most people in each country who do not know anything about Deaf Education or research, would never know what SignWriting is or care for that matter - ha!

Anyway - all is well and we have a great future before us - the internet has provided us with such a gift of communication that it doesn't matter where we are located, we can use SignWriting in an "online community" …

I know in Italy you have your own private SignPuddle server within your organization (Elena arranged for that years ago with us), but it would be great if someone in Italy could start adding some signs written in Italian Sign Language into our free public SignPuddle Online for Italy - Here is the link and of course it is public and anyone can view the data, but that is good too, for our visitors to SignPuddle :

SignPuddle Online for Italian Sign Language
http://www.signbank.org/SignPuddle1.5/index.php?ui=1&sgn=63

Right now there are only 11 signs in it because your work has been done privately I believe, so anyway - that is something I would like to improve over time - is to have more signs in some of the online databases for visitors to enjoy and write with - I realize this is not a small task and I know you are way to busy yourself, but if you have students who would like to learn how to add signs to SignPuddle Online that would be wonderful -

Many blessings everyone for a great day -

Val ;-)

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On Feb 8, 2012, at 8:48 AM, Claudia S. Bianchini wrote:

> Helo Stefan,
> Why I make you smile? Do I write something strange in english?
> Claudia
> 
> 
>  
> 2012/2/8 Stefan Wöhrmann <stefanwoehrmann at googlemail.com>
> “We have to work harder!!! :-)”
> 
>  
> 
> Cannot stop laughing! ;-)
> 
>  
> 
> Stefan
> 
>  
> 
> Von: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages [mailto:SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU] Im Auftrag von Claudia S. Bianchini
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 8. Februar 2012 13:53
> An: SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU
> Betreff: Re: Who we are?/ How many?
> 
>  
> 
> I think it depends on what you think that using SW is! It's depend on the project (transcription, writing, education, translation, informatics?), the people involved, the cities involved...
> Can we tell Italians use SW? There is a group of italians using SW, but there are less than 10 persons (we just start spreading SW, after 10 years studing it for research purposes, so now we have about 50-60 persons knowing it, but did they use it? I don't know!). By the way, they use it massively to research purpose envolving writing and transcription. So we can't tel that Italians (all!!!) use SW, but we can tell that there is a "pole of excelence" on SW in Rome.
> I think that it very hard to speak about countries using it. I prefere to think that there are places where SW is used: Rome (10 persons), Toulouse (1 person), La Jolla (Valerie and the DAC's members)... Maybe in some palces it's more extended, because they use it at scool (but to be considered "spread" it have to be more than one single scool, I think). I hope that, frome those "pole of excelence" we can spread SW all around us, but it's not already done! We have to work harder!!! :-)
> 
> 2012/2/8 Madson Barreto <barretobh at gmail.com>
> 
> Hello all,
> 
>  
> 
> I followed the discussions in the forum and via email
> 
> every day I see people of all countries participating.
> 
> I have a question:
> 
>  
> 
> Who we are (how many countries currently use the SignWriting)?
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Madson Barreto
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Claudia S. Bianchini
> 
> PhD student
> Univ. Paris8 / UMR7023
> Univ. Studi Perugia / ISTC-CNR
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Claudia S. Bianchini
> PhD student
> Univ. Paris8 / UMR7023
> Univ. Studi Perugia / ISTC-CNR
> 

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