Again, somebody who seems to have skipped over everything I've ever said about signed languages, going months and dozens of posts back. Whatever. The part of the e-mail that really struck me, though, was: 1) Bokmål is spelt bokmål, not båkmal. Not that big of an issue though, because people do things like that all the time, for example Jimbo's "Mandarian" or Angela's "Sinetic" (though to be fair, Angela's "Sinetic" e-mail was in response to somebody else who used that erroneous spelling). 2) Perhaps you're thinking of Traditional and Simplified Chinese, rather than Cantonese and Mandarin? As countless native speakers have testified here, Written Cantonese is very different from written Mandarin, it can't be considered a variant logically. 3) Each variant of sign language is the part that really took away a good part of my faith in the human race. popular belief, sign language is not universal. Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages develop, but as with spoken languages, these vary from region to region. They are not based on the spoken language in the country of origin; in fact their complex spatial grammars are markedly different." Chinese Sign Language and American Sign Language are AS DIFFERENT AS ENGLISH AND CHINESE, if not more so. In fact, relations between signed languages often offer interesting contrasts to the spoken languages of the areas, for example: American Sign Language is closely related to French Sign Language, but is completely mutually unintelligible with British Sign Language. Taiwanese Sign Language is closely related to Japanese Sign Language, but is completely mutually unintelligible with Chinese Sign Language or Hong Kong Sign Language. Cheers? Mark On 09/09/05, Craig Franklin <craig(a)halo-17.net> wrote: -- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE