[Sw-l] SW-L Digest - 27 Jul 2015 to 28 Jul 2015 (#2015-145)

Fri Jul 31 13:28:48 UTC 2015

Hi André and everyone,

this is an interresting discussion. To me it seems very strange. I am not deaf, and I use SignWriting mostly as a tool in connection with dictionaries. This I have done for 30 years now. But even if I seldom write texts in SignWriting, when I do, it never occured to me to use the dictionary and the translate option to write a text. That would seem so far from normal text writing. I would write in the sign writing editor, and use the sign maker directly. From time to time I would use the dictionary to check on my way of writing (the 'spelling'). Afterwards, if the signs in my new text were not already in the dictionary, I might add them via the option given. But I would no more write Norwegian Sign Language through a dictionary and a translator programme than I would use a tranlator programme to write Norweian or English. The Delegs programme I would presume would be a help for the interpreter students here in Norway who are taught to write the glosses, they would certainly benefit to to learn the shape of the signs that belongs to the glosses, and I presume that the Deaf German students can write directly in Deutsche Gebärdensprache if they so choose. 

Ingvild 

Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2015 14:36:55 -0400
From: atg at VIDEOTRON.CA
Subject: Re: Re : SW-L Digest - 27 Jul 2015 to 28 Jul 2015 (#2015-145)
To: SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU

Hi Dali and
everyone,

Dali: Thank you
so much for sharing your experience with us and describing it so well.

You enlightened
me about how to type in Chinese by using Pinyin on a computer.  Then, I
read more about it on Wikipedia.  According to Wikipedia, all children in mainland China are
required to learn Pinyin
in school.  Pinyin is in fact very popular over there.  If people do
not speak Chinese, they are not able to use Pinyin. They will need to learn the
standard Chinese pronunciation of characters before they are able to use this
input method.  I wonder if Deafian Chinese children have particular
difficulties in using Pinyin because they are not skilled in learning the
standard Chinese pronunciation of characters.

The stroke
method does not require the user to know how to speak Mandarin nor to be able
to recognize the characters.  I think that Chinese Deafian users who use a
stroke-based input method are able to construct the character from scratch as
one would do in writing Chinese.  However, according to Wikipedia, it
is a disadvantage in that it may cause language attrition
and skills loss in adults, and it may be a learning barrier for children asconcerns written Chinese.‪

Best regards,

André

De :  Dali balti <livingtabernacle at YAHOO.FR>
Répondre à :  "SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages" <SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU>
Date :  Wed, 29 Jul 2015 16:25:10 +0100
À :  <SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU>
Objet :  Re : SW-L Digest - 27 Jul 2015 to 28 Jul 2015 (#2015-145)

Hello dear André!Before starting to use computers to type Chinese, it was thought that it would not work because Chinese is not letters but symbols!But they found out two basic ways to type Chinese on computer.The first one is by using Chinese pronunciation transcription which is called "pinyin". Chinese is based on syllables, there are no single letters, which means that you cannot make up new pronunciations out of the existing ones, I will give you some examples; with the phoneme "b" you can have the following combinations: ba/bi/bu/ban/bang/beng/etc... But with the phoneme "j" you CANNOT make any of the previous pronunciations, except "ji". In all there are about 400 syllables in Chinese and it is lesser than English which
 is a free language in which you can have any combination of letters (some linguistics say that in English there are about more than 65000 syllables)... You can imagine that now!Back to the writing system, and using "pinyin", in Chinese we type the pronunciation transcription and not characters themselves. The pronunciation system is a worldwide system for Chinese learning! For example, to type "bicycle" in Chinese, I need to type the pronunciation pinyin into the computer and it will show up the Chinese characters---- zì xíng chē = bicycle.That's easy, isn't it?BUT! BUT! BUT!The problem is bigger when the word to type is bisyllabic. Because the computer will show you a list of many words having the same pronunciation but with different writing forms. For example: the pronunciation "yan yuan" would have the following different characters!演员 / 眼缘/ 盐源/ 颜渊So in this case
 you will have to click on the word you need each time you're typing! It's not boring because the computer can detect the logical words combinations in a single sentence, sometimes it might miss the point!Some other Chinese people use strike by stroke system, which looks like SW! Every Chinese character has a logical way to be written in order stroke by stroke. On computers you can find this system but it is boring, you type on the basic strokes and the computer detects the order and try to guess the character, it shows you a list of possibilities and you click on the character you want!Chinese is now written from left to write!

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Le 29 juil. 2015 05:06:26, SW-L automatic digest
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Topics of the day:

  1. Writing Chinese using a computer
  2. Certificate of Participation for SignWriting Symposium 2015 (2)

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Date:    Tue, 28 Jul 2015 08:53:17 -0400
From:    =?ISO-8859-1?B?QW5kcuk=?= Thibeault <atg at VIDEOTRON.CA>
Subject: Writing Chinese using a computer

> Ce message est au format MIME. Comme votre programme de lecture de courriers ne comprend pas
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Hi Dali, Yu and
 everyone,

=20

I noticed that some people posted their message on the SW list.  Some of
them talk about the Chinese writing characteristic (vertical writing vs
horizontal writing) and a Chinese computer.  Why do I ask Dali and Yu?
Because both of you are skilled in writing Chinese and in using a computer.
Then, I would like you to share your experiences with us regarding writing
Chinese using your computer.

=20

Yu: You are an international student. I cannot remember the name of the
College you attend. You live in Toronto. You mention that you lived in Chin=
a
before.  I have a question: Can you write Chinese faster by using a
computer?  Does writing with a computer in English vs writing with a
computer in Chinese take about the same time?

=20

Dali:  I cannot believe that you can use up to 15 languages!  I understand
that you are a Chinese teacher. As you
 can write both the SW Tunisian Sign
Language and the SW Chinese Sign Language, I have two questions: 1) What ar=
e
the similarities and the differences between writing a SignWriting and usua=
l
Chinese as concerns using a computer? Which one is slower or faster when
using the keyword or the mouse? When the writing is done horizontally or
vertically? What action is the easiest, the most difficult, and so forth?

=20

It is common for people to use a translate feature and translate from
glossed texts to sign texts in order to save time. 2) Is it common for a
Chinese user to write Chinese using a translation feature (I do not know th=
e
exact word (translation) for the Chinese computer system) like SignPuddle
(translate feature) since they need to save time?

=20

Yu and Dali: Is it true that modern Chinese is written horizontally when
using a
 computer?

=20

Best regards,

=20

Andr=E9

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