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Jan. 27th, 2005 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
After much study and hard work, I've found various ways of writing sign languages.
They all look impossible. Part of this, of course, is the fact that I cannot speak a sign language, but part of it is... they're impossible. I keep thinking that there has got to be a better way.
I think part of the problem is that they all seem to be written like English - linearly. But we all know that in sign languages, you can do several things at once. You have to. You have at least three cheremes (position, movement, handshape), four if you count facial expression, probably more (like I said, I don't really know what I'm talking about). They don't go linearly, they can't. Your hand is always somewhere. But people are trying to write them linearly.
I have an idea, but I don't know how good it is, because, as I said, I know nothing about sign languages. But is it possible that a system like Korean's would work better? Hangul is a syllabic alphabet. Each syllable is made up of phonemes that are... I don't know, stacked? It's all explained briefly here. What if an alphabet for a particular sign language worked that way? Blocks made up of four levels, one for each type of chereme that people try to write down, and anything extra could be done in diacritics. Then, instead of long strings of characters and variables and faces you'd have strings of syllables. Which leads to another question: can you divide words in sign languages up into syllables like that? Have I lost it here?
They all look impossible. Part of this, of course, is the fact that I cannot speak a sign language, but part of it is... they're impossible. I keep thinking that there has got to be a better way.
I think part of the problem is that they all seem to be written like English - linearly. But we all know that in sign languages, you can do several things at once. You have to. You have at least three cheremes (position, movement, handshape), four if you count facial expression, probably more (like I said, I don't really know what I'm talking about). They don't go linearly, they can't. Your hand is always somewhere. But people are trying to write them linearly.
I have an idea, but I don't know how good it is, because, as I said, I know nothing about sign languages. But is it possible that a system like Korean's would work better? Hangul is a syllabic alphabet. Each syllable is made up of phonemes that are... I don't know, stacked? It's all explained briefly here. What if an alphabet for a particular sign language worked that way? Blocks made up of four levels, one for each type of chereme that people try to write down, and anything extra could be done in diacritics. Then, instead of long strings of characters and variables and faces you'd have strings of syllables. Which leads to another question: can you divide words in sign languages up into syllables like that? Have I lost it here?
no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 09:53 am (UTC)