Sign languages
Kent Karlsson
kentk at cs.chalmers.se
Wed Feb 22 11:40:56 CET 2006
John Cowan wrote:
> No. A signed spoken language (this term is ad hoc, but the best I can
> come up with) is a hybrid between a spoken language and a true signed
> language. Signed Exact (American) English, for example, has a sign
> for every word of American English, and uses them in English syntax.
> Thus a sentence such as "I have two sisters" is signed using
> four signs, "I-sign Have-sign Two-sign Sisters-sign".
>
> This is entirely distinct from American Sign Language, which is an
> entirely separate language quite unrelated to English (its closest
> relatives are French Sign Language and Martha's Vineyard Sign Language).
> No such one-to one translation from the signs of ASL to English is
> possible.
Aha. But in that case, I've never heard of something that would be
termed "signed spoken Swedish". A (very) small web search did not
yield any support for such a thing existing either (though I guess it
it theoretically possible).
> > written language) for common "words"/concepts, TOGETHER with
> > spelling out in signed letters for names and not so common words.
...
> Quite so.
But a tag like sgn-US does not say which language lettered words
are in; though they are most likely in English, they may well be in
Spanish. Likewise, for sgn-FI, lettered words are most likely in
Finnish, but may well be in Swedish. Etc. But I don't know enough
about sign languages to make a constructive suggestion.
/kent k
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