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From:
Stefan Woehrmann2 Date: Thu Jul 26, 2001 9:48 pm Subject: skepticism about SignWriting Re: Keeping in touch - Brazil | ||||||||
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Dear Cristina , Valerie and list members ,
thank you very much for your message. It is a very common and important experience - there are still other people who seem to be pretty much afraid of what is going on in these days.
For such a long time people tried to experiment with various notation systems for SL - and all the systems before seemed to be to complicated or too timeconsuming or simply not ready for every day use. And now
a hearing person - a dancer - who doesnīt care too much about the linguistic problems that are connected to SL invents a Movement Writing systems that should be usefull and practical in order to "write" SL ??
I bet that many " famous researcher in deafness " are still more than skeptical. What are the reasons ? There may be many reasons - but one on the top of the list may be that people are in general afraid of new concepts. People in general are afraid to change their minds and concepts that helped them to get along so far - and one of these concepts seems to be that there is no way to read and write SL.
To my astonishment I read in the past a few skeptical comments about GebaerdenSchrift (=SW) in Germany - and nobody of them would be able to understand our email -lessons. In fact I heard some comments in discussions about it - but these people hadn't even seen one single sign written in SW !!!!!!!! They simply argued against it - hm - ---
So - if this big change does not suit their plans - there may be a underlying fear of becoming incompetent. This can lead to overreaction or even hatred - Most of them try to fight this fear by not discussing or even mentioning this new writing system. SW works as all of us know who are looking at the childrens pride, who are amazed that we can read each others movement-descriptions. ..
On the other hand - Iīm afraid that I would not have been able to understand the chances and concepts if I had stumbled over SW 15 years ago. The development that has taken place in the meantime is enormous. At the same time - at least here in Germany time has changed the attitude towards SL in general. Now we are going to support teachers for the deaf to become more familiar with DGS !!! I guess that the Literaca Project has been a wonderfull idea to enable schools to get the foot into the door ! The internet allows us to exchange our spelling problems. We donīt have to wait for weeks for our answers - well if Valerie is not too busy behind the scenes ;-)))))))
The practical problems that occur day by day if you are working on a daily basis need to be solved.
Well - and we have to admit that there is a big difference : Learning to read SW is sooooo easy - but learning to write is not !!
What we need is more basic knowledge of why and how ... and lots of these wonderfull, wonderfull email - lessons with the attached gifs that help to clarify things.
Thank you Valerie for your kind and generous support !
There are still many more things to learn in detail but the system seems to be a wonderfull tool for both groups of SL-user . (hearing and deaf)
The better I can explain how to read and write movements the better are my chances to present SignWriting as a gift for those who are ready to look for a answer to their questions. There is no need to try to convince any
"famous researcher" . Time is on our side :-))))
Hopefully we will discuss soon your next spelling questions !!! ;-)
All the best
Stefan ;-)
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