| SignWriting List Archive 1 October 1997 - May 1998 |
May 8, 1998
MESSAGE TO THE SIGNWRITING EMAIL LIST
SUBJECT: Standardization of ASL
Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 14:21:00 -0400
X-Sender: ianw@stn.net
To: DAC@SignWriting.org (Valerie Sutton)
From: ianw@stn.net (The Watsons)
Subject: Standardization of ASL
PLEASE POST TO LIST
Hello everyone,
I have been following the list with great interest for some
time now, and have become firmly committed to the promotion of
SignWriting.
I did not get into SignWriting from a professional point of view,
though my background is in Speech Pathology, but from a personal
one. My husband and I recently expanded our family to five, by
adopting a little boy who is deaf, and I have therefore been
looking for as much information as possible relating to ASL.
We have been learning for about a year, so are still novices,
but our son is doing incredibly well.
Something that I have noticed in taking classes, following videos
and reading books, is that ASL vocabulary differs widely across
North America. No sooner have I learned a sign, but we have to
relearn it as it is not the sign of use in this part of Ontario.
Some signs are in use only at the local school for the deaf.
Now that I have been reading the grammar file in the SignWriting
programme, I realise that the grammar is also different! For
instance, we have been taught that the verb must always come
after the subject and object of the sentence. Some examples from
the file include the signed sentence, " you go home "
where our signed word order would be " home you go "
with the object first, subject second and the verb last.
A couple of other examples:-
" Suppose I money, I buy book " here becomes " Suppose money I have, book I buy "
" Suppose rain, I stay home " here becomes " Suppose rain, home I stay "
I was very intrigued to find this difference in grammatical
structure, and can't help but feel that SignWriting is the way
to standardize ASL across North American to the benefit of all
users, deaf and hearing alike. After all, this is what increased
literacy has done for every other language in the World.
I firmly believe that if children learn SignWriting before they
learn English, their literacy level in English will increase
and English will be easier for them to learn. After all, as it
stands, English is not only a second language to native ASL users,
but it is also limited only to the written form. That is a much
harder way to learn any language, particularly if you cannot
already read your own..
Here in Ontario, my two older sons attend a French Immersion school. It is unusual in that it is 50% immersion, ie. half the day is spent learning in French and half the day in English. Kindergarten is 100% English, and the children learn to read and write in English in Grade 1, and although they are exposed to French writing at the same time, they are not formally taught to read and write it until midway through Grade 2. This allows the kids to be confident in their first language before embarking on a second, and when the kids finish High School, they are on a par not only with their peers who attended English only school, but also, interestingly enough, with their peers who went to 100% French Immersion.
I mention this because I can see this method's usefulness
for teaching SignWriting and English in all our schools in the
future. I hope the future is soon!
Shiona Watson
ianw@stn.net
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