Well…this discovery
will certainly shake up the linguistic world – back to the drawing board on
everything we thought we knew about language evolution and early
civilizations. You could get a Nobel prize for this, Stefan!
Ha! This is gorgeous and also with whimsy,
Stefan…Thank you for this….There is a DanceWriting figure taking a bow on one
knee on the bottom of the dress of the figure on the left - very cute!
Did you know, when the SignWriting Script was
categorized as one of the world’s scripts by the International Bureau of
Standardization (ISO) in 2006 ( http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html ), the
discussion was at the time that we were similar to Hieroglyphics… I questioned
that but then there was not a good way to categorize SignWriting but as a
“Featural Alphabet” like Korean Hangul ;-)
Hi Honza, Valerie and
everybody...
when I did this kind of
research a decade ago I found some very interesting documents that may lead to
the assumption that SignWriting is a notation system that existed already long
time ago... smile
Hello Honza and everyone -
Thank you for starting this interesting thread, about the “genesis” or
the background and history not only to SignWriting, but to writing sign
languages throughout history. There is a lot to discuss.
Regarding Roch-Ambroise Auguste Bébian…
I first heard about Bébian’s system in September 2007, when my
friend Shane Gilchrist (hi Shane!) suggested that I purchase a book called “I
See a Voice” by Jonathan Rée. I ordered it from Amazon.com and then enjoyed skimming the chapters
related to writing sign languages, from page 293-324. It was there that I first
learned about Bébian, but I was immediately attracted to his system and his
feelings about writing sign languages and felt a “connection” (you know what I
mean - almost a spiritual feeling that we were on the same plane, so to speak).
And there are many other interesting stories and information in the book which
makes me think I should read the book more carefully - I confess I have only
skimmed the book.
But yes, Honza, I see the connection, but no, I did not know about
Bébian at the time of my first writing Danish Sign Language and a South Pacific
Sign Language back in Denmark in 1974, 1975 and 1976.
I was a little different than the other developers of writing systems,
in that I did not come from a knowledge of any sign language, nor did I have a
desire to learn linguistics. I loved languages in general, but that is not a
linguistic interest. I was already writing the dances of the Bournonville
tradition at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen with my invention in 1974, and
when I started writing the movement of both hearing people and Danish Sign
Language from a video at the University of Copenhagen starting in 1974, I was
sharing my time between writing dance at the Royal theater and writing sign
language movement and hearing-person’s gestures at the University - I saw
myself as a movement notator and not a sign language writer at the time…but
overtime, as I wrote more of Danish Sign Language on the video, I became aware
it was a real language…I self-published two booklets on writing sign languages
- one on writing Danish Sign Language, and the other on writing signs from a
South Pacific Island with Rolf Kuschel. These two booklets are mentioned on
this web page, and I could scan them and post them on the web if you wish…would
you like to see these old historic documents?
My influence was definitely Friedrich Albert Zorn ( http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Albert_Zorn ), and Walt Disney’s animation that
places movement in drawings frame by frame by frame from left to right on a
five-lined staff that can fit under music… That was my starting point…
Then I started writing sign language in stick figures at the University
go Copenhagen… Later I learned about Dr.Stokoe and his research…
I think starting visual with stick figures, with no linguistic
judgements, had great value, and I still believe in the visual, but it is the
writers we work with, like yourself, Honza, and in my case, the Deaf Action
Committee, that had the greatest influence on our writing expressively, in
vertical columns, without full stick figures…the way we write today…and the
internet had a big influence…where I and others meet people like yourself - as
we write we influence each other...
I bet there were many other writing systems for sign languages before
and after Bébian, that we have not heard of, because everyone needs a way to
write signs… Adam tells me that most signers have developed their own way of
writing their language from time to time…Adam developed his own system too,
before starting to work with SignWriting, and I have also met other Deaf
signers who have done the same - Bernard Bragg is one -
If Bébian had done his work during the age of the internet, we might be
writing his system worldwide now - smile -
recently I researched history if writing sign languages and I realized
that the very first writing system developed by Roch-Ambroise Auguste Bébian
(French) is in some way similar to SignWriting.
Did you know about Bebian's writing system by the time you developed
SignWriting on the basis of DanceWriting and were you inspired by his system or
not?
It is known that Stokoe created his notation system on the basis of Bebian's..
It is very interesting fact.
It interests me because I teach about writing sign languages at
University, but I haven't found enought detail about this.
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