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From:
Valerie Sutton Date: Fri Jul 3, 1998 9:56 am Subject: Dutch Museum Displays SignWriting | |
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Fri, 03 Jul 1998 15:36:05 +0200 From: Inge Zwitserlood ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE NETHERLANDS Special SignWriting Display at the SIGN LANGUAGE EXHIBITION AT UTRECHT UNIVERSITY Starting Friday 26 June (and lasting until February 1999), the University Museum of Utrecht University (the Netherlands) hosts: KIJK ! TAAL An exhibition on aspects of Sign Language Until comparatively recently, educational environments and conditions for acquiring sign language were far from perfect. In Europe during the first half of this century, the use of sign language was often prohibited in schools and institutions for the deaf, out of the noble but essentially mistaken belief that learning to speak would be the deaf person's doorway to society. Fortunately, these ideas are now considered outdated and detrimental to the deafs' cause. In the Netherlands, Nederlandse Gebaren Taal is on the verge of being officially recognized by the government as a minority language on Dutch soil. This exhibition is presented from the point of view that Sign Language is an extremely `visual' form of language. It takes the opportunity the provide general information about language, and languages, to a relatively lay public, and emphasizes that sign languages are the natural languages of the hearing impaired anywhere in the world. In a simple fashion, and by dint of a number of specially developed games, it discusses some basic linguistic notions such as the language faculty in the brain, the process of language acquisition, and the building blocks of words and sentences. And it addresses some common misunderstandings about sign languages: they are neither completely `iconic' nor universal, they are not simply the word-by-word signed counterparts of the spoken languages of the same cultural community, that it has no literate form. Instead, it is shown that you can say anything you like in it; perform poetry in them, make jokes, and so on. As you wander around, you are invited to play the language games, to test your expression, to try to guess the signed translations of Dutch words, to practice signing short stories and to call somebody by means of the videophone. Also, there is a lot to see, e.g. the human brain, articulators and perceptors of language. Examples of written forms of sign languages are shown, viz. HamNoSys, SignPS, the Stokoe notation system and the most elaborate of all, SignWriting. There is a short overview and comparison of language acquisition in (hearing) children that are taught a spoken language, children that are taught a signed language and chimpanzees that are taught a signed language. Also, you can watch and listen to the expression patterns of spoken languages: intonation. "Kijk ! Taal" is a joint production of the Utrecht University Museum, the The Hague Vi-taal Foundation (Tony Bloem and Ruud Janssen), and the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics (Wim Zonneveld and Inge Zwitserlood). Museum open: 11-17 hrs. daily (Sa/Sun 13-17 hrs.) The Lange Nieuwstraat 106, where the museum is situated in a beautiful new building in the Utrecht "Museum Quarter", is a 5 minutes walk from the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics at Trans 10. From Trans, rather than turn right towards the Inner City and the Dom Tower, turn left: this is the Korte Nieuwstraat which inevitably spills into the Lange Nieuwstraat. Utrecht is a 20 minute train ride from Amsterdam. The museum's location is a 20 minutes walk (or a 10 minutes bus ride) from the central railway station: go through the Inner City towards the Dom Tower, then proceed as above. Inge Zwitserlood ____________________________________________ Valerie Sutton :-) https://www.SignWriting.org Sutton at the DAC Deaf Action Committee For SignWriting Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA (619)456-0098 voice (619)456-0010 tty (619)456-0020 fax |
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