On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Valerie Sutton wrote:
> It made me think of the differences between Danish and Norwegian...Why
> can a Dane have a conversation with a Norwegian, without changing
> their language, and still understand each other? Some can do it better
> than others though, so I guess there is some flexibility involved with
> the two who are communicating....
Well, this gets us a little off-topic, but there's been an
interesting discussion on the Sign Language Linguistics List related to
this topic.
Danish and Norwegian are fairly close, but beyond that, my
understanding is that the standard Norwegian (also called Bokmal) that is
taught in schools is not actually Norwegian, but Danish! In the past
century, there has been a movement to replace Bokmal with a mixture of
Norwegian dialects, called Nynorsk. I think that most Norwegians can
write in both Bokmal and Nynorsk.
> Teachers oftentimes just work with the "day to day" communication and
> leave such analysis to the researchers....
In my experience, teachers sometimes spend more time criticizing
students for not conforming to a standard than letting students express
themselves. I should say that Cecelia, Lorraine and Kate haven't been
that way!
> Is there any published research on the signed languages of the Arabic
> Nations?
My friend and colleague Dan Parvaz mentioned a book on Tunisian
Sign Language. He's been to Jordan and collected some data on Jordanian
Sign Language, but I don't think he's published any of his findings yet.
I can ask him about it.
--
-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
Linguistics Department
University of New Mexico
|
SignWriting List Forum