Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa wrote:
Thanks to everyone for their contributions :-)
- there are many different subgroups that makes up the deaf community - but
often it’s the national sign language that unites us.
- 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.
- 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