Hi,
there's an interesting toy called "Liquid information" under development [1]. It takes the (sometimes already excessive) wiki linking a step further by making *every* word a link (kind of).
Try the demo of the en.wikipedia home page "liquified" at [2]. Put the mouse cursor over a non-linked word, and see a context menu pop up.
While in that demo it seems like overkill to me, maybe we could "borrow" one or the other design element from it?
Magnus
[1] http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66382,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2 [2] http://www.liquid.org/hyper3/hp3/HP3_Menu?url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%...
what about using to link projects together (for example, dictionary and encyclopedia article ?)
ant
Magnus Manske a écrit:
Hi,
there's an interesting toy called "Liquid information" under development [1]. It takes the (sometimes already excessive) wiki linking a step further by making *every* word a link (kind of).
Try the demo of the en.wikipedia home page "liquified" at [2]. Put the mouse cursor over a non-linked word, and see a context menu pop up.
While in that demo it seems like overkill to me, maybe we could "borrow" one or the other design element from it?
Magnus
[1] http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66382,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2 [2] http://www.liquid.org/hyper3/hp3/HP3_Menu?url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%...
Everyone,
I'm new to this list so I do hope u don't mind me asking a naïve question here.
It is great to see that there are wikipedia's in spoken/written languages - but being from a Northern Ireland Sign Language community myself, I wonder if it is possible for Wikipedia to create
Sign.wikipedia.org
to imply that it is for national sign languages - the real beauty about national sign language communities is that we tend to work together, crossing the borders, encouraging the development in protection and support for our national sign languages etc.
Is it possible?
Let me know,
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa
It is great to see that there are wikipedia's in spoken/written languages - but being from a Northern Ireland Sign Language community myself, I wonder if it is possible for Wikipedia to create
Sign.wikipedia.org
to imply that it is for national sign languages
Excuse my ignorance, but how do you write sign language? I was under the impression that no common written form of sign language exists (although I know of attempts to create a notification system, which is however more like a dance notation language than a normal alphabet).
Skriptor [[de:Benutzer:Skriptor]]
Kaixo!
On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 08:44:01AM +0100, Skriptor wrote:
Excuse my ignorance, but how do you write sign language? I was under the impression that no common written form of sign language exists (although I know of attempts to create a notification system, which is however more like a dance notation language than a normal alphabet).
Writting sign languages with alphabets makes no sense at all, as there is no sound to encode, but motions and expressions instead. An ideographic system is much more logical to the nature of the languages; and while current representations are quite far away of what we would expect a written language to look like, if it spreads in use it could well evolve to be something looking like chinese writting.
I think the most viable system is Stokoe (with the modifications used in the BSL dictionary). It is by far the easiest to learn and doesn't use more than a couple of non-latin glyphs (the problem is the positioning of subscript and superscript clusters and diacritics).
Few people write signed languages at all, and when they do they usually use the "gloss" method (ie, word-for-word translation into the national spoken language). After this the most popular is Sutton SignWriting which I personally despise for various reasons, then Stokoe, then personal systems (yes, prior to Stokoe and SSW some people wrote signed languages using systems they invented themselves), then HamNoSys (based on Stokoe, but capable of much more detail, perhaps paralell to Stokoe not distinguishing from allophones but HNS distinguishing; mostly used in academic circles).
Stokoe is in fact an alphabet, just because it doesn't record sound doesn't mean it can't be broken into similar units.
Mark
On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 14:43:41 +0100, Pablo Saratxaga pablo@mandrakesoft.com wrote:
Kaixo!
On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 08:44:01AM +0100, Skriptor wrote:
Excuse my ignorance, but how do you write sign language? I was under the impression that no common written form of sign language exists (although I know of attempts to create a notification system, which is however more like a dance notation language than a normal alphabet).
Writting sign languages with alphabets makes no sense at all, as there is no sound to encode, but motions and expressions instead. An ideographic system is much more logical to the nature of the languages; and while current representations are quite far away of what we would expect a written language to look like, if it spreads in use it could well evolve to be something looking like chinese writting.
-- Ki ça vos våye bén, Pablo Saratxaga
http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/ PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466 [you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto] [min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
I think the most viable system is Stokoe (with the modifications used in the BSL dictionary). It is by far the easiest to learn and doesn't use more than a couple of non-latin glyphs (the problem is the positioning of subscript and superscript clusters and diacritics).
Few people write signed languages at all, and when they do they usually use the "gloss" method (ie, word-for-word translation into the national spoken language). After this the most popular is Sutton SignWriting which I personally despise for various reasons, then Stokoe, then personal systems (yes, prior to Stokoe and SSW some people wrote signed languages using systems they invented themselves), then HamNoSys (based on Stokoe, but capable of much more detail, perhaps paralell to Stokoe not distinguishing from allophones but HNS distinguishing; mostly used in academic circles).
The important question is: what do our potential deaf users _themselves_ want? Then we can worry about who's going to find the motivation to adapt the software appropriately to support their needs.
Given the choice of an underlying notation, a nice general way to proceed would to be able to define a vocabulary in some notation, and to then reference that vocabulary using {{template}}s, thus allowing the re-use of the quite complex gestural symbols units that make up sign language. Multi-layered templates could allow whole phrases or sentences to be built up.
Presumably the Holy Grail of any such notation would be that it would be expressive enough to allow the generation of sign-language animations at some later date...
-- Neil
Neil Harris (usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk) [050128 01:44]:
The important question is: what do our potential deaf users _themselves_ want? Then we can worry about who's going to find the motivation to adapt the software appropriately to support their needs. Given the choice of an underlying notation, a nice general way to proceed would to be able to define a vocabulary in some notation, and to then reference that vocabulary using {{template}}s, thus allowing the re-use of the quite complex gestural symbols units that make up sign language. Multi-layered templates could allow whole phrases or sentences to be built up. Presumably the Holy Grail of any such notation would be that it would be expressive enough to allow the generation of sign-language animations at some later date...
The other important question is: to what extent is this [[original research]]? A lot of small dialects don't have teribly standardised orthography and their Wikipedia choosing one is already likely to have a fair bit of [[observer effect]]. Is there a sign language with an accepted standardised notation already, or are we talking about inventing one?
- d.
All of these notations are standardised and can be used for any signed language. Unfortujnately, nonve of them are widespread and the only universally understood option would be to use video clips, which is horrendus (vrml might work too, but it's still not a viable option)
Mark
On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 01:59:17 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Neil Harris (usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk) [050128 01:44]:
The important question is: what do our potential deaf users _themselves_ want? Then we can worry about who's going to find the motivation to adapt the software appropriately to support their needs. Given the choice of an underlying notation, a nice general way to proceed would to be able to define a vocabulary in some notation, and to then reference that vocabulary using {{template}}s, thus allowing the re-use of the quite complex gestural symbols units that make up sign language. Multi-layered templates could allow whole phrases or sentences to be built up. Presumably the Holy Grail of any such notation would be that it would be expressive enough to allow the generation of sign-language animations at some later date...
The other important question is: to what extent is this [[original research]]? A lot of small dialects don't have teribly standardised orthography and their Wikipedia choosing one is already likely to have a fair bit of [[observer effect]]. Is there a sign language with an accepted standardised notation already, or are we talking about inventing one?
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson said:
All of these notations are standardised and can be used for any signed language. Unfortujnately, nonve of them are widespread and the only universally understood option would be to use video clips, which is horrendus (vrml might work too, but it's still not a viable option)
I like that latter idea, though it's probably way beyond the scope of the MediaWiki project. Presumably it should be possible to have some kind of VR mannequin that takes any of these alphabets and produces understandable sign.
Kaixo!
On Fri, Jan 28, 2005 at 01:59:17AM +1100, David Gerard wrote:
A lot of small dialects don't have teribly standardised orthography and their Wikipedia choosing one is already likely to have a fair bit of [[observer effect]].
On the other hand, the very nature of collaborative work of wikipedia drives toward writting standardization. While the writting production of a language is limited to authors works like poetry, novels, etc; it can remain unstandardized, each author using his own spelling, and all is right; but when several people can work on a same article, with a signle phrase being potentially written by several different people, then common spelling conventions are a necessity. And it is quite interesting for me to see how the wikipedia work has given increased focus on the standardization problem for languages that until then didn't thought much about it.
Think simply about articles titles and linking; how would you be able to correctly link articles if you can't guess what the article title may be because of lack of standardization?
Is there a sign language with an accepted standardised notation already, or are we talking about inventing one?
There is a writting system yes (actually several, it seems), it is standardized in its principles; now, it seems sign languages have quite a large dialectal variation (maybe the almost inexistant writting in sign language is an explanation of that); but that problem is no bigger than for any spoken language in a similar situation (that is, with a weak written tradition).
That being said, I'm not sure that the initial question was about a wikipedia written *in* sign language; maybe it was just about providing information in other languages (like English) about sign language, in such case of course a different wikipedia is not needed, and specialized articles could perfectly fit the existing wikipedias. Until a reply about that question isn't done, we can't know what the initial intent was.
If it is about writting in sign language, a difficulty is that what seems the most widespread writting system is not encoded in unicode, so it needs extra work; but as hyerogliphs are supported in wikipedia (the only site I know that allows to type and read hyeroglyphs, btw), and as the writting system for sign language I saw has some similarity to egyptian hyeroglyphs (not in shape, in logic) a similar solution could be done if that is actually needed.
Now, as said previously, I don't know if that is what was asked for; but even if it isn't, it won't surprize me if some day there would be sign languages wikipedias; Wikipedia has made so many inroads and pioneering in languages support it is likely that the first wiki site for a written sign language would be in wikipedia; and it is definitively in the scope of the project.
Neil:
The important question is: what do our potential deaf users _themselves_ want? Then we can worry about who's going to find the motivation to adapt the software appropriately to support their needs.
Not to discourage, but I can well imagine that many deaf users are quite happy with what is already there. Sign language is probably their first language, but many will have their literacy in the spoken language - that's the language they read and write, often on a daily basis.
It's the same with many other speakers of dialects and smaller minority languages - the 'big' language is the language of schooling and written communication. Smaller languages often remain just oral languages - or in the case of sign language, signed languages.
Of course this is all spoken by someone who does not have any direct experience with deaf people, so I gladly admit I'm wrong if someone else with more direct experience tells me differently. :-)
Andre Engels
Yes, but does that mean we shouldn't have Wikipedias in, for example, Frisian, Limburgish, Irish, or Basque?
While reading an encyclopedia in a secod language you use on a daily basis is definitely doable, in many cases it would be easier and possibly preferred for somebody to be able to read content in their native language.
The reason we aren't flooded with thousands of requests for new languages each day is because a relatively tiny number of people know that they have the option to request these languages, and they are left to believe that using the Wikipedia in the LWC (language of wider communication) is their only option.
Wikipedia being primarily written rather than oral or gestural, it is obviously very difficult for us to have languages that are exclusively or almost exclusively spoken/signed. Thus, while some people may write signed languages, at the moment the literacy rate in the first language is SO incredibly low that an encyclopedia in one of these languages would have next to no audience - most signed languages have less than 1000 speakers (remember the general definition of speech doesn't limit it to oral communication), some such as American Sign Language have in the hundreds of thousands, and a couple (Indian Sign Language and Chinese Sign Language) have over 1 million.
In some of these cases (almost completely limited to Indian Sign Language and Chinese Sign Language), a great number, even the majority, of the speakers of these languages are monolingual or have very poor national language skills (in China, some places have communes exclusively for deaf people so they live effectively in their own communities; India has some similar things but not so much so), but also perhaps .0001% of them are literate in the signed language, and even then they may use different writing systems, so they are unreachable with anything but a visual medium.
Since it isn't our job to campaign for literacy, I think we shouldn't have Wikipedias for /any/ signed language until literacy reaches at least 1%, and while this is certainly the case for some signed languages (in Scandinavia, I believe) these are also some of the places where the deaf population is most linguistically integrated, and they mostly use SSW which is next to impossible to represent on a computer without using images (which would be extremely high bandwidth).
Mark
On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 19:16:28 +0100, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
Neil:
The important question is: what do our potential deaf users _themselves_ want? Then we can worry about who's going to find the motivation to adapt the software appropriately to support their needs.
Not to discourage, but I can well imagine that many deaf users are quite happy with what is already there. Sign language is probably their first language, but many will have their literacy in the spoken language - that's the language they read and write, often on a daily basis.
It's the same with many other speakers of dialects and smaller minority languages - the 'big' language is the language of schooling and written communication. Smaller languages often remain just oral languages - or in the case of sign language, signed languages.
Of course this is all spoken by someone who does not have any direct experience with deaf people, so I gladly admit I'm wrong if someone else with more direct experience tells me differently. :-)
Andre Engels _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Thanks to everyone for their contributions :-)
1. there are many different subgroups that makes up the deaf community - but often its the national sign language that unites us.
2. there are hundreds of different sign languages around the globe - thats 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)
Shane
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l- bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andre Engels Sent: 27 January 2005 18:16 To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?
Neil:
The important question is: what do our potential deaf users _themselves_ want? Then we can worry about who's going to find the motivation to adapt the software appropriately to support their needs.
Not to discourage, but I can well imagine that many deaf users are quite happy with what is already there. Sign language is probably their first language, but many will have their literacy in the spoken language - that's the language they read and write, often on a daily basis.
It's the same with many other speakers of dialects and smaller minority languages - the 'big' language is the language of schooling and written communication. Smaller languages often remain just oral languages - or in the case of sign language, signed languages.
Of course this is all spoken by someone who does not have any direct experience with deaf people, so I gladly admit I'm wrong if someone else with more direct experience tells me differently. :-)
Andre Engels _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa@francismaginn.org) [050128 09:43]:
- 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)
Can they be machine translated with usable accuracy? (Even as much as Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?) That would help a *lot*!
- d.
(by machine) from English to the Sutton SignWriting - yeah - but from SignWriting to English, I dont think so.
It will take us a while before we can reach an agreement on this.
Shane
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l- bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard Sent: 27 January 2005 23:24 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa@francismaginn.org) [050128 09:43]:
- 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)
Can they be machine translated with usable accuracy? (Even as much as Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?) That would help a *lot*!
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa@francismaginn.org) [050129 01:38]:
David Gerard:
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa@francismaginn.org) [050128 09:43]:
- 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)
Can they be machine translated with usable accuracy? (Even as much as Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?) That would help a *lot*!
(by machine) from English to the Sutton SignWriting - yeah - but from SignWriting to English, I dont think so. It will take us a while before we can reach an agreement on this.
I meant between each other - Simplified and Traditional Chinese are *mostly* a one-to-one correspondence between characters (with a few dodgy bits). Do the three sign systems have a 1-1 or mostly 1-1 correspondence?
- d.
The writing systems, not exactly, but machine conversion would for sure be possible (I think).
Mark
On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 01:56:59 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa@francismaginn.org) [050129 01:38]:
David Gerard:
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa@francismaginn.org) [050128 09:43]:
- 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)
Can they be machine translated with usable accuracy? (Even as much as Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?) That would help a *lot*!
(by machine) from English to the Sutton SignWriting - yeah - but from SignWriting to English, I don't think so. It will take us a while before we can reach an agreement on this.
I meant between each other - Simplified and Traditional Chinese are *mostly* a one-to-one correspondence between characters (with a few dodgy bits). Do the three sign systems have a 1-1 or mostly 1-1 correspondence?
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
David,
At the moment, very little - but its slowly growing at the moment.
Shane
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l- bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard Sent: 28 January 2005 14:57 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa@francismaginn.org) [050129 01:38]:
David Gerard:
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa (shane.gilchrist.oheorpa@francismaginn.org) [050128 09:43]:
- 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)
Can they be machine translated with usable accuracy? (Even as much as Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?) That would help a *lot*!
(by machine) from English to the Sutton SignWriting - yeah - but from SignWriting to English, I dont think so. It will take us a while before we can reach an agreement on this.
I meant between each other - Simplified and Traditional Chinese are *mostly* a one-to-one correspondence between characters (with a few dodgy bits). Do the three sign systems have a 1-1 or mostly 1-1 correspondence?
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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.
Yes, but here we are talking about how there is a language barrier between, for example, American Sign Language speakers and Indian Sign Language speakers since they are not related.
- 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.
I don't see why we should do this if we don't also have an oral.wikipedia.org to unite spoken languages. Interlingual communcation is just as difficult as between any other two Wikipedias, and there is just as much of a potential for growth.
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.
The main problem here is that there is no consensus on what writing system to use, and it's impractical to create differnet Wikipedias for a single signed language to such a degree where we end up with thousands for all signed languages.
- 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)
This is not true, there are many more. Most of them are derivatives of Stokoe and used in educated (not nessecarily academic, though) communities. There are quite a few more that are used by individuals or small groups of individuals which they invented themselves.
As far as the names for the systems, yours are inaccurate. They are Sutton Sign Writing (which is copyrighted and difficult to compute with, but popular), Stokoe (William Stokoe didn't name it himself, so it only has one word in its name), and HamNoSys (which you got right).
Stokoe was invented first and isn't really very complicated - in fact, it's easier than SSW - but there's really only two books that will teach it to you (Stokoe's ASL dictionary, a different BSL dictionary which made minor improvements to the system).
HamNoSys was derived from Stokoe but is meant to be more exact, so you can write allophones, it's sort of like the IPA of signed languages, and it's very very difficult to learn.
Sutton Sign Writing came last, and was invented by a woman who invented some sort of dance writing. It has had by far the most promotion (Stokoe just put his out there, expecting people would use it, and HamNoSys was intended only for the scholarly community), is copyrighted, and is by far the most difficult to encode. It's definitely more difficult than Stokoe, but easier than HamNoSys.
Mark
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
While this may be true in some parts of the world, many users of Chinese Sign Language and Indian Sign Language do not have this luxury.
Mark
On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 11:08:26 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
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
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa said:
Everyone,
I'm new to this list so I do hope u don't mind me asking a naïve question here.
It is great to see that there are wikipedia's in spoken/written languages - but being from a Northern Ireland Sign Language community myself, I wonder if it is possible for Wikipedia to create
Sign.wikipedia.org
to imply that it is for national sign languages - the real beauty about national sign language communities is that we tend to work together, crossing the borders, encouraging the development in protection and support for our national sign languages etc.
Is it possible?
Let me know,
It sounds like an interesting idea. Are there established computer representations of any of the national sign languages? Excuse my ignorance.
Kaixo!
On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 05:59:22AM -0000, Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa wrote:
Sign.wikipedia.org
to imply that it is for national sign languages - the real beauty about
There are two major problems with that: - writting of sign languages is not yet standardized in computers (there is writtign system; but it isn't in unicode; and there is opposition to it, some people thinking that sign languages must be "oral" only (well, visual actually, but not written)), that is actually the most important problem, lack of standardization to encode it (often a lot of gif images are used instead) and the problem of the input; however, the wikipedia has come with a way to encode and display egyptian hyerogliphs; so a similar solution could maybe be developped. - there is not a single sign language, but a variety of them, so a unique sign.wikipedia.org would not be possible, there should be a different one for each different languages (and I have no idea of how much different sign languages exist)
Or, if your proposal was not for a wikipedia written in sign language, but for content about sign languages written in other languages (eg: in English), then a specific wikipedia is not needed, you can just create/enrich the articles on the wikipedia of the language you want to write in.
PS: for people maybe not aware of it: a writting of sign languages is a system that describes the body movements used in sign languages, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SignWriting http://www.signwriting.org/
On Tuesday 25 January 2005 23:36, Magnus Manske wrote:
While in that demo it seems like overkill to me, maybe we could "borrow" one or the other design element from it?
This is part of my knowledge base concept :)
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