Hi Charles and friends
 
Wow - I loved to read this message!
 
.... your system is used for Deaf chlidren to learn to read and interpret and write spoken German and translate from German sign language into proper spoken or written German.
 
Well  - it is not "my" system. It is my method. And it is only a part of the whole thing!  
 
 
".... However, most educators in the US are looking at teaching English to the Deaf and though communicating with the Deaf in ASL they are looking at getting the Deaf to understand and read and write spoken English. The purpose of the classroom is to teach English, not to examine and honor ASL in its own right as its own language."
 
I would love to meet people who understand that in order to become smart it is important to communicate in a strong communication - system which turns out to be Sign Language for deaf students. At least in Germany that would not be enough to get along pretty good in the hearing society. All the written materials and all the situations when you have to communicate with a hearing person without any interpreter at hand - you are much better off if you improve your spoken language skills!
 
Their ONLY argument was "why should I teach SW to ANY Deaf children when what I want to do is teach them ENGLISH"
 
They should invite me! - smile I would be able to give an inspiring lecture and demonstration and workshop! hahaha
 
.... German to Deaf kids, not be used as an everyday common writing system for Deaf Germans whose only language is German Sign Language. 
 
Well we use GebaerdenSchrift exactly for that purpose as well - to document and preserve and learn German Sign Language as it is...
 
Greetings
 
Stefan


 

Von: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Charles Butler
Gesendet: Montag, 17. Oktober 2011 15:53
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: AW: Mundbilder in der GebaerdenSchrift

From this message, I see we are understanding each other, your system is used for Deaf chlidren to learn to read and interpret and write spoken German and translate from German sign language into proper spoken or written German.

As a bridge system, it is doing its job. 

I am now looking at ASL written in SW without and independent of an English translation, written to be ASL as ASL not as a pidgin English on the hands to be translated into English for the hearing and speaking English population. The purposes are different.

However, most educators in the US are looking at teaching English to the Deaf and though communicating with the Deaf in ASL they are looking at getting the Deaf to understand and read and write spoken English. The purpose of the classroom is to teach English, not to examine and honor ASL in its own right as its own language.

So, ASL is still not an independent language, but a colonized language, one which is not a language "of the marketplace" with its own history, but one essentially secondary. We once had a newspaper in that language, assuming ASL as the first and only language of a Deaf population. 

I tried to teach SW to a class of Deaf educators in Ohio. Their ONLY argument was "why should I teach SW to ANY Deaf children when what I want to do is teach them ENGLISH", not some other writing system. "They", the Deaf children", don't have time to learn another writing system on top of English. 

They'd undersstand your GebaerdenSchrift because its only purpose is to teach German to Deaf kids, not be used as an everyday common writing system for Deaf Germans whose only language is German Sign Language. 

Charles Butler
[log in to unmask]
240-764-5748
Clear writing moves business forward.

--- On Mon, 10/17/11, Stefan Wöhrmann <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Stefan Wöhrmann <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: AW: Mundbilder in der GebaerdenSchrift
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Monday, October 17, 2011, 9:35 AM

Hello Bill,

 

thank you very much for your comment. Well I have to explain that your assumptions to not go along with my practical experience of teaching deaf students for more than 10 years now using this concept.

It is not only for the purpose of articulation but very much to identify a given sign in its meaning – if you are asked to write a German translation. I had been so amazed to learn how difficult it is for a deaf student to write down what you explain – even if you use signed German. They are no fools so they catch the idea between the lines – but they have to be trained to focus on themselves: Would I be able to write it down. And lots and lots of mistakes related to vocabulary and grammar will be the result if you really get to the point to run this test.

 

My students do exactly what you cannot imagine. With so much competence they write any Mundbild-Sequence by hand – no problem at all whatsoever!  And of course we tried many different things to reduce the amount of the Mundbilder. For example if you count from one to hundred – it is self understood that you do not need  a l l the Mundbilder. Same is true if you know that you are talking about colors. If it comes down to sign names (Stefan, Valerie, Bill... ) that are known to the students we follow the method from Nicaragua and add this tiny line underneath – so no extra Mundbild is necessary.

 

On the other hand – believe me – You would not believe how much advantage can be taken out of every single Mundbild if the words are difficult to differentiate or if they are new terms ...

 

Attached you find a document – it is not finished. The whole document will be far more than 100 pages. And we feel blessed and honoured that the software Team at Hamburg are so sensitive and competent to create exact that kind of software that really fits to our needs. My students look at this document and are asked to write or read out loud the German translation. Although it is written in signed German it is a very difficult task. We understand that we have to edit this document in order to be able to write the translation without too much guessing!  It is not the final stage so far.  So we will add more Mundbilder in the future and I can imagine the big smile in their faces because then they will be able to improve their Spoken German skills dramatically!

 

 

We also tried a string of Mundbilder without the face circles as you suggest. – big smile  -

 

We do not do that – guess why!

 

Right now it seems to be a wonderful way to support deaf children to develop higher skills in Spoken Language if we write GebaredenSchrift as we do.

 

All the best

 

Stefan

 

 

 

 

Von: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Bill Reese
Gesendet: Montag, 17. Oktober 2011 14:56
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: Mundbilder in der GebaerdenSchrift

 

Charles,
I have to agree with you on this.  It seems to be a lot of extra writing.  But, as Stephen pointed out, it could be used for articulation training but not necessarily the sign itself.  As a research or training tool, you wouldn't have a child in school going to the blackboard to write it.  

I would imagine that, for Ingvild and other's who's sign language differentiates signs by mouth movements that the different signs could, conceivably, be written with just the first mouth movement (if they're dissimilar) or the mouth movement that is more dominant or is different between signs.  

On the other hand, I would also presume it's possible to write a string of mouth movements without the face, similar to the concept of writing Latin letters next to the mouth.

Bill


On 10/17/2011 7:36 AM, Charles Butler wrote:

I guess people are misunderstanding what I'm saying, DELEGS is the closest that I have seen to a DOS program that allowed people to show grammatical differences and word/concept order on the same line or within visual distance to help Deaf people read in their own language and compare it to a spoken language rendering of the same concepts. 

 

I would not want to show a Roman letter within a sign, I'd be showing a facial expression probably quite similar to the Gebarendenschrift, but I don't even know understand why so MANY faces compressed. One may as well be using Cued Speech as one's augmentation, which at least reduces the number of faces to a handful not a line of up to 10 faces.

 

I'm sorry, when I see a row of faces it confuses me, I think signs, not whole clusters of faces. It may show every nuance of the articulation of a face and for showing that to help with lipreading, it may be perfect, but I look at it and think -- how can a child possibly write that on a board with a piece of chalk and say "o this is simple". I guess I'm looking for minimal pairs, what is the absolute minimum necessary to show an articulation, which for the Deaf in the US was to strip the body away and show much fewer facial markers than hearing users expected. The Gebaredenschrift is created to be articulated by computer, as all these programs are, but what of someone somewhere with only paper and pencil, not a computer. If an EMP pulse comes along, all the programming in the world will not survive but a pencil and paper will still function.

 

Charles



Charles Butler
[log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
240-764-5748
Clear writing moves business forward.

--- On Mon, 10/17/11, Stefan Wöhrmann [log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]"><[log in to unmask]> wrote:


From: Stefan Wöhrmann [log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]"><[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Mundbilder in der GebaerdenSchrift
To: [log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Date: Monday, October 17, 2011, 6:49 AM

Hi Ingvild,

 

in order to understand the difference between Mundbildschrift – a tool to support articulation and listening-training -  and Mundbilder in der GebaerdenSchrift  (what you might write in Signwriting in order to present information coming from the lips and tongue) you may download this file.

 

 

http://www.gebaerden.de/files/3187/upload/pdf_new/Mundbilder%20in%20der%20GebaerdenSchrift.pdf

 

 

Stefan ;-)

 

 

 

 

 

Von: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages [[log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Ingvild Roald
Gesendet: Montag, 17. Oktober 2011 11:58
An: [log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: AW: Please help us test SignWriter Studio Beta 5!!

 

I agree, the Mundbildschrift and the Mundbilder the Gebäredenschrift are not the same - but very useful.

The writing of 'words' beside the mouth was / is just a lazy (and formerly only) way of writing the different mouthing of signs that are otherwise similar. With Mundbildschrift this can be done directly - so I do not really miss this oprtunity to write the latin letters near the mouth. Whith the latin letters the connection to the Norwegian word is stressed, but letters are not really part of SignWriting

I have looked at DELEGS - and I am refering to it in my lecture later this week in the Netherlands - as I am to your Mundbildschrift - I am recomending the use of SignWriting as part of making deaf children literate

Ingvild

Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:46:32 +0200
From: [log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Subject: AW: Please help us test SignWriter Studio Beta 5!!
To: [log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]

Hi Ingvild and friends,

 

it is interesting to understand that you agree with my concept that it is necessary to add information coming from the lips- and tongue movements in order to “understand” the exact meaning of a given sign.

 

“....Signs that are the same in the hands and other movements, differ in the mouthing and make distinctive signs that way. NSL claims to have no homonyms (two or more signs that look exatly the same but have different meaning) because of this....”

 

Well my invention of Mundbildschrift is not the same as my set of “Mundbilder in der GebaerdenSchrift”

 

Nevertheless – thanks to the studies of Erica Hoffmann with my students we found out that it is not correct simply to add the letters of a word (spoken language) next to the sign in order to avoid “Mundbilder”

 

To my very surprise I had to understand – and this has been such an amazing experience – that even little deaf children having no idea of how to write the spoken word – show almost mouth – and tongue movement patterns that almost look like the same – as a “informed” signer would perform.

 

Mouth movements are part of the usual guessing game trying to understand from lip-reading.  From my actual point of view these Mundbilder which I defined to stand for special patterns of movements that might result in specific sounds of a given spoken language come pretty close to the best representation of what can be seen (!!!) looking at a signing person.

 

And you are right – SignPuddle – so far does not allow to type latin letters – as you could do with the DOS Program. Did you get the chance to look at the German new softare Delegs?

 

Now you get the chance to look for your signs almost loke in the good old SWDOS –program.

 

In addition to that you are able to change the preferred sign alternative in every document without any problem. You can copy this specific sign and paste it with this same variation. You can write the best translation of the signwriting  sentence beneath this line and hide or show one or both lines! This is the perfect tool to support deaf students to improve their spoken language skills. Just look at the attached gif.

 

Our team is still busy, busy, busy to complete our vision of an almost perfect SignWriting – software program to support this idea which is the motto of our Editor: “Delegs” = Deutsch lernen mit GebaerdenSchrift"  = learn German assisted by SignWriting".

 

All you need is a well fed dictionary and this wonderful program.

 

All the best

Stefan

 

 

 

 

 

 

Von: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages [[log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Ingvild Roald
Gesendet: Montag, 17. Oktober 2011 11:15
An: [log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: Please help us test SignWriter Studio Beta 5!!

 

?

I don't think I can write a 'word' in latin letters beside a mouth in SignPuddle, can I?

On the other hand, I DO love the newer software,

Ingvild

Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:11:06 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Please help us test SignWriter Studio Beta 5!!
To: [log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]

SignWriting List

October 16, 2011

 

Hi Ingvild and Charles!

 

Two thoughts...

 

First, SignWriter DOS is not past tense - it is not in the past. I am using it right now, and so can anyone. Just download DOSBOX and install it:

 

DOSBOX

 

Second, software like SignWriter DOS and SignPuddle 1.6, actually has little to do with how you write. You can write the Norwegian mouth movements in any style you choose in SignPuddle 1.6 too - software is not a theory of writing - so there are no limits to your writing styles when it comes to Mouth Movements in either software program...

 

The only limits to SignWriter DOS usage is that it uses a smaller symbolset (sss1995) and it cannot write down in vertical columns - but other than that there are no limitations on your writing styles no matter which software program you choose -

 

I think what you really are saying is that you enjoyed writing the old way - and that is fine because you can continue to write the old way!

 

smile -

 

We are adding a lot of Norwegian signs and documents - have you notice?I am so happy about it!

 

SignPuddle for Norway

 

There are close to 3000 signs now in the dictionary and the literature puddle is growing too - we may need to move some of the individual signs from the literature puddle to the dictionary puddle, but we will do that work later - Thank you for all your old SignWriter DOS files, Ingvild! I am happy to build a sign language corpus in SignPuddle Online for all countries -

 

Val ;-)

 

---------

 

 

 

 

On Oct 16, 2011, at 5:36 AM, Ingvild Roald wrote:

 

Another good thing about the DOS-program was the possibility to write the mouthed 'words' near the mouth, rather than using the later invention of Mundbildschrift', for those signed languages that use a lot of mouthing in the signs. Norwegian SL uses mouthing a lot, especially for nouns. Signs that are the same in the hands and other movements, differ in the mouthing and make distinctive signs that way. NSL claims to have no homonyms (two or more signs that look exatly the same but have different meaning) because of this.

Ingvild 

Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 19:03:24 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Please help us test SignWriter Studio Beta 5!!
To: [log in to unmask]

Part of it is to understand that many educational systems use Sign Writing to show the grammar comparing a local sign language to the local spoken language. 

 

The useful thing about SW Dos is that one can use the spoken language, the signed language, and fingerspelling so that one can compare gramatically, very similar to the current German system. 

 

Thank you for your attention. Charles



Charles Butler
[log in to unmask]
240-764-5748
Clear writing moves business forward.

--- On Thu, 10/13/11, Jonathan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


From: Jonathan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Please help us test SignWriter Studio Beta 5!!
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, October 13, 2011, 11:09 AM

Hi Charles,
    I just tried out SignWriter DOS to see exactly what you are talking about.   I see you can type right over a sign if you want to, below, above and if you type a long sentence the other signs move over.  Is it important for you that the be place on top of the signs too?  Or is it more important for you to be able to write some text, then some signs, then some text, etc?
    Had I realized that so many just LOVE the old SignWriter Dos I may have gotten permission to duplicate it very faithfully.  With SignWriter Studio some things may be similar but none are identical.  Right now I am trying to get the three main parts of the program working, the dictionary ( I will soon have a preview version available), the signlist (for printing lists of signs from the dictionary) and the document.   Once I get everything working again after changing to ISWA 2010 and a new database, I am interested in implement a keyboard like SignWriter DOS.  But first things first.
    The document isn't functional right now.  Also it only deals with vertical columns of writing for the time being.  It can have text above the sign up to the width of the sign, then it wraps onto more lines.  At present there isn't any way of writing just text without a sign but it shouldn't be too hard to implement.   The editing of the signs is done in a popup box instead of directly in the document like SignWriter DOS.  A lot of thought has been put into it to use the keyboard but it may need a few more adjustments yet.

Thank you for sharing this important feature with me and list.

Jonathan

On 10/10/2011 9:48 AM, Charles Butler wrote:

Jonathan, What I really want is SignWriter DOS on a modern system.

In that program you could interleave written alphabets and sign writing. Clunky, but effective.

You could clip signs from a narrative and put them somewhere else.

It was a true typing system for signing so that you could assemble a sign by typing on a keyboard not a mouse. Yes, I know that the current encoding of the ISWA is dependent upon a linking of graphemes and coding equivalents.

None of the Studios or other efforts have gone back to actual interleaved Spoken Language and Signed Language.  I can clip a sign and put it in here
 , in TEXT, when does THAT come back in a program. I feel like we are continuing to take a great leap backward. Until one can type or easily assemble, one can't' send email that is in sign language with a spoken language. IF Chinese can do it, I am disappointed in every Sign Writing compiler on the market that can't interleave. 

Charles Butler

This is an email program and I can do that, but the SW studio and all other programs do not do that. 


Charles Butler
[log in to unmask]
240-764-5748
Clear writing moves business forward.

 

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