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From:
"Angus B. Grieve-Smith" Date: Fri Aug 6, 1999 6:13 pm Subject: Re: proper names | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Joe Martin wrote: > Seems to me... > We should all be careful about this "correct names" business. The > correct name for anything is whatever the users of the language stick > with-- ---and ain't nobody yet figgered out how to affect the process! That's not entirely true, Joe. Various issues of authority can influence those users to stick with one name or another. The relationship between the Flemings and the Walloons is pretty sticky, and I'd imagine the Flemings wouldn't be too happy to have a language that they don't speak referred to as "Belgian Sign Language." In actuality, though, the language we're talking about is English, and it's hearing Americans like you and me who are the users of this language. So what we stick with goes. The point I'm trying to make is that we should get away from this one-to-one mapping between spoken and signed languages. Why do the initials for a signed language used in Brazil have to be in Portuguese, and those for a signed language used in Belgium have to be in French, or Flemish? Roman-based sign writing systems have the advantage that you can have initials in the signed language, not in some spoken language. -- -Angus B. Grieve-Smith Linguistics Department The University of New Mexico | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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