Mark, Do not treat me as if I know everything about all language because I do not. Having said that, your attitude towards languages is skewed towards a particular point of view, you aproach it from a speaking persons point of view. That is the traditional way that linguists, people that express some expertise about languages, do this. I am not a linguist but I have had the benefit of some intense information by Wolfgang Georgsdorf about speaking and signing languages. Now from my point of view, a dictionary has always been about written languages. Traditionally when the spoken language was considered, there were phonetic scripts and these are only usable to people who studied this. To the vast majority of the human population they are worthless.

The scripts that you sum up so well, are from a practical point of view in the same category as the phonetic scripts, they are useless to the majority of the people that may have a need for them. Your assertion is correct, "written English is a transcription of spoken English" but there is a limit to this; you have to speak English to be able to transcribe it. So in this assertion you show that you can speak English.

I aproach languages from a completely different angle than you do. I am working on a dictionary, I am working on a dictionay on the Internet and your point of view, while traditional, does not help me a bit in understanding how this dictionary is going to work for deaf people. To me it is quite simple; for a deaf person, it is necessary to know a written language in order to use a computer. Given this skill set you can present a user interface. It is easy to translate from that written language to a sign language this way. However, this aproach has one important draw back, it negates the reality of sign languages being languages in their own right with their own vocabulary with meanings that do not translate well.

You say that it is absurd to make a destinction between three language types; spoken, written and sign languages. I can tell you that my written expressiona are different from my spoken expressions. When I speak, tone of voice is important, when I write grammar is more relevant. I use different words depending on speaking or writing. I think this is true for everyone yet you make it an absurdity..

I am glad that I do not have to prove that I know anything about languages, I am happy that I know enough to create a data design for an electronic all inclusive dictionary. I still need all the help that I can get and I still need all comments that people can give because hey, what do I know.

Thanks, GerardM

Mark Williamson wrote:

Gerard, you can find the message to which I was referring at the end of the present message.

Please do not treat me as if I know nothing about the subject, because I certainly do.

Many deaf people learn to speak and to read lips. I don't really think whether or not deaf people learn a spoken language is an issue regarding Wiktionary. But certainly, many deaf people DO learn spoken languages, even if you think (as you appear to) that spoken and written languages are completely distinct entities.

Besides, it's absurd to state that written languages are not related to spoken languages. Written English is nothing more than a transcription of spoken English (in a standard dialect).

As of yet there is no widely-used written language which does not correspond directly or nearly directly to a spoken or signed language.

You say there are three different kinds of languages, spoken, written, and signed. This, too, is absurd!

Written languages are always associated with a spoken language (or in some cases, a signed language). Thus, when we say "Finnish", we're referring to the language spoken by the majority of Finns, as well as the language written by the majority of Finns, because in the minds of all reasonable people they are a single entity.

Do you think that if Korean kids had to learn to write Dutch-written-language in school rather than Korean-written-language, it would be just as easy? Obviously, it would not. This is because knowing spoken Korean makes it much easier to learn written Korean, and knowing spoken Dutch makes it easier to learn written Dutch, because there are many simple correspondences. Learning a different written language, however, is just as difficult as learning a different spoken language.

But again, this isn't the main point. Please read the e-mail below:

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com Date: 24-Aug-2005 03:06 Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spell checking in MediaWiki To: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@wikimedia.org

Hi,

That page states that the ways for writing signed languages are closer to Chinese characters than Latin script.

This is completely incorrect.

Please see below for my suggestion on signed languages.

There are 4 main ways of writing signed languages:

1. With word-for-word glosses in a spoken language. For ASL or BSL

this is usually English; for InSL it may be Hindi or another Indian language or English; for Chinese SL it will probably be Chinese. While this is suitable in most cases for writing whole sentences and recording syntax and grammar, it gives no specific information about what a sign looks like and thus is completely unsuitable.

2. Sutton SignWriting. This writing system is copyrighted and use of

it is not free. However, it is currently the most widely used of any of the 3 main sign-writing systems today, at least by deaf people (researchers are more likely to use HamNoSys or Stokoe). It is more like Korean letters: each part of any given symbol says something specific about how to form the sign, but they are combined to form what may appear to the uninitiated to be a logographic sign, when in fact it is most certainly not. More information at http://www.omniglot.com/writing/signwriting.htm

3. HamNoSys. A very complex system that can be best compared with a

"Narrow transcription" of a spoken language using the IPA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetic_transcription#Narrow_and_broad_transcr... , it is used mostly by researchers. However, it's much easier to represent on computers than Sutton SignWriting. More information at http://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/Projects/HamNoSys.html

4. Stokoe. Stokoe is actually, in a sense, the basis of HamNoSys. It

is more equivalent to the Latin script than any of the other systems, in fact it borrows many letters from it. Its use is restricted mostly to researchers today. Some people accept the minor changes made by it by a BSL researcher, however any more drastic changes are usually considered to be separate systems.

Suggestion: Use http://www.unm.edu/~grvsmth/signsynth/ -- data will be stored as a computer representation of Stokoe, but can be played back. Demo available at http://www.panix.com/~grvsmth/signsynth/ ...

Although the native rendering for SignSynth is VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language), I imagine it would be quite easy to convert automatically or even to make it render initially in a more widely-used format, such as some sort of video or animation format.

This would limit the space that would be taken up by the storage of so many videos -- there are hundreds of signed languages on the planet today, and to store videos for each word in all of them (or even just the major ones and the 1000 most frequent words) would take up a lot of space.

While it is obviously not perfect (look at the forehead... oh my is she ugly!), it's definitely good enough that someone could imitate it and their imitation would be the proper sign very accurately, and it's also good enough that anybody who can speak sign language (there are better terms than "speak", but they seem awkward to me) should be able to understand it well.

Presumably, the developer of the software could be solicited for further cooperation.

Mark

On 24/08/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:

...

Lars Aronsson wrote:

...

Sabine Cretella wrote:

...

Well Lars, we are not so far away from making a different point in that. It is one of the usages we have in mind with Ultimate Wiktionary. Since there we will have words in all languages and have these words in a relational database it is easy to "extract an actual spellchecker" every now and then.

I keep hearing these promises, but "seeing is believing"! Have you started actual work on UW yet, or are you sitting idle while waiting for Wikidata to be released? Will there be an English free dictionary that can compete in size and quality with Aspell's current dictionary by the end of 2005? Or by the end of 2006?

Hoi, Actual work on UW itself is underway. Here you can find the data desisgn http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design This design is very much open for comments and I am happy to say that many comments that were given have led to changes. I name but a few changes that came about this way; Can sign languages be included - now they can, Can attestations be included - now they can.

As Ultimate Wiktionary is dependent on Wikidata, there is little option for us but to wait untill it is ready. It is really important that Wikidata is done well because it will not serve only Ultimate Wiktionary but also Ultimate Wiktionary.

When both Aspell and Ultimate Wiktionary are considered Free, it should be possible for us to work together. Once we find this cooperation possible, we could host the data currently included in Aspell in UW. In return we would provide a publicly accessible website where it is easy to add new words thay will end up in Aspell. Even when we do not cooperate, there will be languages that currently do not have a spellchecker. These spellcheckers I am particularly exited about because this is where we will be able to add value.

Without a massive infusion of data, it will be hard to predict when we have as many words as Aspell does for languages where Aspell has a dictionary.

Then again, if we create a wordcount on the Wikipedia content, run it against a spellchecker, the resulting list should be spelled correctly and could be included in UW. Particularly for our biggest wikipedias and the amount of topics covered, it should be a list that might be close to the size of what Aspell has. We will also have a long list of words missing in Aspell. We will however not get a spellchecker for British or American in this way.

Thanks, GerardM.

Thanks, GerardM