[Foundation-l] Signal languages Wikimedia projects

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 2:14 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Many people who are deaf have not learned to read and write in their own
> language.
[snip]
> It is true that many deaf people do not know how to write their own
> language.

I think the shifting definition of 'own language'. In discussions of
other languages which follow national borders 'own language' has been
defined to be the language spoken by a persons ancestors, regardless
of what a person prefers to use. Here we must be using some other
meaning since the overwhelming majority of deaf children are born to
hearing parents who do not speak sign language.

I know some deaf English readers/writers who would be very insulted if
you claimed English was not their language.

There are some deaf advocates who claim that deaf people should not
interact with the hearing world, not in person, not online. These are
a fringe minority, a vocal minority, but a fringe minority none the
less. There are people who argue that deafness is equivalent to
national, cultural, or racial identity and that attempting to cure
deafness is akin to attempting to cure blackness. (really!) We should
not allow these people to set our policy.

[snip]
> It is because of the lack of of a script that the Deaf communities
> have a problem retaining much of the vocabulary that goes out of fashion.

I'm glad you admit that they lack a script. That was basically the
core of my statement: They do not, effectively, have a script today.
As such it is unreasonable for us to expect that we can do much to
help real speakers of these languages today.

We can help people who are working on creating a script for signed
language by supporting it in a project. But we have no idea if and
when whatever script we support will actually be useful to a
significant number of speakers of these languages. Because script
support is so wrapped up with pro-isolation advocacy (along with
mandatory sign language education and forbidding cochlear implants, as
they are all necessary components for isolation) it is a politically
loaded area.

There are also competing systems. I do not believe we can decide
whether SignWriting or Stokoe's notation system is more desirable,
though certainly the latter would present fewer technical limitations.

> It
> is because of this that their culture is to be given to the next generation
> by rote and consequently much is lost.

I do not generally consider it to be beneficial to have groups of
people who are unable to communicate fluently with most of the world.
But I admit that there is merit to the claim that cultural things are
lost when a pre-existing state adopts a world language.   But in the
case of the deaf?

The world has enough isolation.  On the Internet no one even needs to
know that you are deaf… unless you have the misfortune of being raised
in one of the few strongly pro-isolationist deaf communities and did
not obtain fluency in a common written language.

Wikimedia's mission is to promote knowledge, we believe we can do that
best by supporting the many languages which people prefer to use, but
Wikimedia projects should not be a tool for promoting isolation. Not
nationalist isolation, not cultural isolation, and not the isolation
of the deaf. Accomplishing the former without venturing into the
latter requires careful action and careful consideration of who we
allow to advise us.

I don't really care to carry on an argument over this much further. My
last real interaction with the 'deaf community' was almost 8 years
ago, and I have too many other projects in progress to worry about how
we might be contributing to the isolation of the deaf (or others).  I
simply do not want the participants here believing that creating a
SignWriting Wikipedia would help the deaf *today* as it would not. In
the near term it would help SignWriting advocates, just as Lojban
wikipedia helps Lojban advocates. I do not think this is a reason to
reject SignWriting Wikipedia, but we should be aware of what it
actually is and not mistake it for an uncontroversial aid to the deaf.