G.I.P.!! (and language nerdity)
Oct. 8th, 2005 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniGot a hundred spaces for userpics... might as well start using them.
It's an adaptation of something I painted on a sweatshirt in my sappy, unicorn-obsessed teenage years, and I have kept a soft spot for the image ever since.
For those unfamiliar with this hand signal, it's a casual way to say "I love you." It's a combination of the American Sign Language letter signs for "I," "L," and "Y," as seen here:
American Sign Language Alphabet.
American Spoken Language is closest to British, as we know. But American Sign Language is closest to French Sign Language, because Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who was a pioneer in education for deaf children in America, chose the methods used in France, rather thn Britain. ... Now I'm curious. I'm going to Google for French Sign Langage and British Sign Language, for comparison. ... in any case, I have enough rusty ASL in my brain to get around Paris -- as long as I meet up with a Deaf native ;-).
will ETA later, probably...
[ETA: Found this webpage, that compares the British Sign Language fingerspelling alphabet to the American one. I'm including the whole thing, rather than just the illustration, because I fell into reading the whole thing. It seems to be part of a Lingusitics course from the University of Pennsylvania, and I'm a sucker for word nerdity like that. Note: it's noted on that page (last updated in '03) that there are 103 different Deaf signed languages around the world. But when I searched the site linked to, I found that the number had gone up to 121 -- that's a sign that the Deaf around the world are becoming less isolated and are educating each other. ...Hmmm... and thanks to mass media and mega business, spoken languages are losing diversity.
And here is the fingerspelling alphabet for French Sign Language]
It's an adaptation of something I painted on a sweatshirt in my sappy, unicorn-obsessed teenage years, and I have kept a soft spot for the image ever since.
For those unfamiliar with this hand signal, it's a casual way to say "I love you." It's a combination of the American Sign Language letter signs for "I," "L," and "Y," as seen here:
American Sign Language Alphabet.
American Spoken Language is closest to British, as we know. But American Sign Language is closest to French Sign Language, because Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who was a pioneer in education for deaf children in America, chose the methods used in France, rather thn Britain. ... Now I'm curious. I'm going to Google for French Sign Langage and British Sign Language, for comparison. ... in any case, I have enough rusty ASL in my brain to get around Paris -- as long as I meet up with a Deaf native ;-).
will ETA later, probably...
[ETA: Found this webpage, that compares the British Sign Language fingerspelling alphabet to the American one. I'm including the whole thing, rather than just the illustration, because I fell into reading the whole thing. It seems to be part of a Lingusitics course from the University of Pennsylvania, and I'm a sucker for word nerdity like that. Note: it's noted on that page (last updated in '03) that there are 103 different Deaf signed languages around the world. But when I searched the site linked to, I found that the number had gone up to 121 -- that's a sign that the Deaf around the world are becoming less isolated and are educating each other. ...Hmmm... and thanks to mass media and mega business, spoken languages are losing diversity.
And here is the fingerspelling alphabet for French Sign Language]
