Finger Direction Is Meaningful

[Adam Frost]

This is a really tough question to answer. There are several things in play
here. You have the theoretical ideals of how to write things, which is what
the first column focuses on (and most of the book for that matter). Then
you have how people have taken different symbols to seem more like it is in
real life. The problem with the latter is that different people see
different things as real life.

The members of the DAC (historically and now) made certain choices as how
to write. When taking a close look at what they chose to do, it was
discovered that they chose to make hand shapes with angled fingers rotated
downward for when the fingers were angled down (like you see on this page
you sent), and rotated up when the fingers were angled up (which would be
for the white palm facings). So this listing isn't extensive because we
don't know if there are other speculations that have not been noticed yet.
But besides that, we didn't want to tell people that the theoretical ideals
presented in the book aren't always 100% used.

An example of that is the Stefan. My understanding of how he writes is that
this page would look completely different. In fact, he mentioned that the
second row confuses him because the thumb does not match where the thumb is
in the real life picture. That is true. This is an exception of the "real
life" matching that is built into the ISWA as the DAC members use it.
Because of the angled fingers in the hand shape, placing the thumb on that
side would mean that the thumb is also angled forward. It was decided that
since the hand symbol with the white palm facing and half-black half-white
palm facing place the thumb on that side, the same thing would happen for
the black palm facing even though it is not like that in real life.

So I realize that this was a long winded answer that doesn't really answer
your question other than "yes and then some with several exceptions". Since
I know that you are trying to make it so that you can search for various
possible writing that are truly the same thing, you'd have to also take
into consideration that there are people who have great differences in how
they would write the same thing to the point that they wouldn't be able to
readily read the other writing without some switching of philosophical
writing hats, if you will. :-)

Adam

PS The Heel of Hand symbols are a little more simple that this is. ;-)



On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Jonathan Duncan
<duncanjonathan at yahoo.ca>wrote:

>  Hi Val and Adam,
>     I have a question about the "Finger Direction Is Meaningful" pages in
> the "SignWriting Hand Symbols" manual and the "American Sign Language Hand
> Symbols" manual.
>
>     I understand the these handshapes and positions can we written either
> like the left column or the right column.  Is this only true in the case of
> the top view of the back of the hand pointing forward?  I see that ALL the
> examples are the top view of the back of the hand pointing forward.  Also,
> would this be true of all handshapes or just the one you have listed on the
> "Finger Direction Is Meaningful" pages?
>
> Thanks
>
> --
>
> email: duncanjonathan at yahoo.ca
>          joyoduncan at gmail.com
> Cel Honduras: (504)3141-1171
> Tel USA: (347)875-8442
> Skype: yojoduncan
>
> SignWriter Studio <http://www.signwriterstudio.com/>
>
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