[Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

Sat Jan 29 19:08:26 UTC 2005

Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa wrote:

>Thanks to everyone for their contributions :-)
>
>1. there are many different subgroups that makes up the deaf community - but
>often it’s the national sign language that unites us.
>
>2. there are hundreds of different sign languages around the globe - that’s
>why I have asked for sign.wikipedia.org to put them together instead of us
>asking for say, bsl.wikipedia.org, asl.wikipedia.org etc etc - it would be a
>central point for sign languages - and once we go to sign.wikipedia.org we
>can go into subgroups there in whatever group suits - for instance, there
>would be a NISL section for Northern Ireland Sign Language community etc.
>
>It can be in any written languages or sign-writing systems - but the main
>thing is that we need a central point for the national sign languages to be
>in the same category - and it can help us build information up etc.
>
>3. There are 3 "sign-writing" systems out there - Sutton Writing System,
>Stokoe Notation System and HamNoSys (Hamburg Notation System) but it is felt
>that the Sutton one will become the most popular as its simple to use and
>easy to use - whereas Stokoe and Hamnosys are more used by academics (deeper
>note-keeping really)
>
One important factor to keep in mind in this debate is that the 
difficulty faced by deaf people is that they can't hear, not that they 
can't see. This suggests to me that a sign.wikipedia would not serve 
much of a purpose since the deaf can already read whatever language is 
used their own community.

What would be more appropriate would be a sign.wiktionary where the 
kinds of problems that have been discussed here can be treated, and 
where cross-cultural and crass-language uses of the same sign can be 
clarified. The traditional hand-alphabets are only a tiny part of 
sign-language. In our ordinary techniques for teaching a first language 
to children we do not insist that they learn the alphabet before thay 
can be allowed to speak.

Ec