Help identifying a sign?

T

Taviaxoxo

New Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2013
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
I was watching a video in which someone appeared to use sign language, but I'm not familiar with the sign. It was the ASL sign for 'R' which he brought to rest over his heart--I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me identify it?

Also, because of the person's nationality, it might have been BSL.

Thank you in advance!

-Tavia
 
I've never seen anyone use a sign like this before, nor did I find it in my dictionary, sorry. :(

Do you think there could be a "what does this sign mean" thread, just as there is a "how do you sign this" thread? I have a few signs I am wondering about, but I'm not sure where to post them. If I can do this somewhere, I will post a youtube of myself doing the signs instead of trying to describe them.
 
I wish you could give a more detailed description. What was the topic of the conversation? Could it be a sign name? What was the movement before it "came to rest?"

OP hasn't been back in six weeks, so I guess we'll never know.
 
Taviaxoxo said:
I was watching a video in which someone appeared to use sign language, but I'm not familiar with the sign. It was the ASL sign for 'R' which he brought to rest over his heart--I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me identify it?

Also, because of the person's nationality, it might have been BSL.

Thank you in advance!

-Tavia
Click to expand...

That's the whole problem with sign language, it's like Linux, there's no one sign language but they are all sign language.

So someone who knows ASL can't understand someone who knows BSL, and they both can't understand someone who knows Aust. Sign Language.

And then there're PSE, SEE... all the others.

It's strange to invest ten to fifteen years in learning a language just to suddenly be unable to communicate again when you migrate, or when, within your lifetime, all of a sudden people start speaking another language.

Not a whole lot of people can learn a whole new language when they are old and habits are ingrained :P

The world needs a Standard Sign Language (like English in the hearing world) so that it can become a lingua franca among deaf people everywhere in the world :P
 
With few exceptions, hearing people have to learn new languages when they move. Hearing people don't have one language shared by all.

In a way, ASL is becoming more widespread. It's not always known as ASL but it has been used as the basis of sign languages for countries that didn't have established languages.

English use is widespread, yes, but I would hardly call it the world standard language.

Languages spread and gain importance only if they have value in the power worlds of commerce and trade (which can include pidgin dialects), or government (think of the Roman Empire).
 
I totally agree with Reba, but would also add that people who know one sign language fluently (or near fluently) have a much easier time understanding and learning different sign languages. When Deaf people from all over the world meet, we're able to bridge the communication gap VERY quickly compared to hearing people.

It's also worth mentioning that English isn't "standard" ... American English, Canadian English, proper British English are all slightly different (truck/lorry, cart/buggy, rubber/eraser, boot/trunk, etc) and that's not even taking into account the English dialects that are almost their own language due to regional pronunciation and word usage.
 
Anij said:
...It's also worth mentioning that English isn't "standard" ... American English, Canadian English, proper British English are all slightly different (truck/lorry, cart/buggy, rubber/eraser, boot/trunk, etc) and that's not even taking into account the English dialects that are almost their own language due to regional pronunciation and word usage.
Click to expand...
True. Eh? :giggle:

Some of the reality programing that I watch on TV finds it necessary to use open captions for English-speaking participants. Without the captions, it's hard for standard American English users to understand speakers from Australia, Great Britain, Boston, and the Deep South, for example. In the Lowcountry of South Carolina, we also have native speakers of Gullah dialect which even other South Carolinians can't understand.
 
Oc318 said:
That's the whole problem with sign language, it's like Linux, there's no one sign language but they are all sign language.

So someone who knows ASL can't understand someone who knows BSL, and they both can't understand someone who knows Aust. Sign Language.

And then there're PSE, SEE... all the others.

It's strange to invest ten to fifteen years in learning a language just to suddenly be unable to communicate again when you migrate, or when, within your lifetime, all of a sudden people start speaking another language.

Not a whole lot of people can learn a whole new language when they are old and habits are ingrained :P

The world needs a Standard Sign Language (like English in the hearing world) so that it can become a lingua franca among deaf people everywhere in the world :P
Click to expand...
Yeah. There could be 5 different signs for 1 word, then there could be 5 different words for 1 sign.
 
VamPyroX said:
Yeah. There could be 5 different signs for 1 word, then there could be 5 different words for 1 sign.
Click to expand...
Why not? In English we don't all use the same words for the same objects or concepts. :lol:
 
Reba said:
Why not? In English we don't all use the same words for the same objects or concepts. :lol:
Click to expand...

True... but it's probably very close to 95% and getting closer. I mean okay there are differences, but trade-wise, it's almost entirely the same. For instance, if you're in the store, and you want to buy bread, you can ask someone where the bread is. It doesn't matter whether you're in the US or UK or Australia or even in some countries in Asia, you can go "Where's the bread?" and people will understand it. Or worse comes to worst you can still say "Bread?" and someone might point you in the right direction.

Or with a really heavy accent, you could even say "buredo".. like a lot of Japanese do, and people would still get it.

But if you approach a signer in a store in a foreign country, and you sign "bread where" you might as well not be signing for all the difference it will make.

Am I right when I say the sign for "bread" is different in pretty much every country? I'm not talking about say, complicated concepts like antidisestablishmentarianism. I'm talking about stuff like bread and water. Stuff that you sort of need to survive, that you have to know otherwise you'd just starve to death or spend an hour wandering around the store :)

I mean, if you're not in a total backwater country, you'd at least be able to find someone that speaks English, even if it's not very well. So you could fly to the UK or Australia next month, and people would more or less understand you, you'd be able to find a hotel, find food, transport etc.

Why don't people at least agree on the basic terms? :P

The other thing is that, because of that, it has no history or tradition. I'm reading Eliot's Middlemarch right now, it was written 139 years ago. Through her I can see what things used to be like. But 139 years ago, what was it like to be deaf? no one knows. No records exist from back then.
 
Oc318 said:
...Why don't people at least agree on the basic terms? :P
Click to expand...
Wasn't that the idea behind Esperanto? It's been around for over a hundred years.

Gestuno has been around about 40 years.

Question: Which "people" get to decide on the "basic terms" that will be chosen?
 
Reba said:
Why not? In English we don't all use the same words for the same objects or concepts. :lol:
Click to expand...

Yes but everyone understands what they mean anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter where you're from, if I say pants instead of trousers, or glasses instead of spectacles, or boot instead of trunk, you know what it means because you can picture it in your mind, and the pictures are all the same.

I'm not even sure how it works, but if you take someone who doesn't know what it is, and say "I have a spare tire in the boot" people know what it means, even if they don't know what "boot" means. I guess they can infer it from the context.

In sign language though, if you don't know BSL, and someone signs in it, you don't know any words. That makes it hard to infer anything from the context because there's no context to infer it from :P
 
Reba said:
Wasn't that the idea behind Esperanto? It's been around for over a hundred years.

Gestuno has been around about 40 years.

Question: Which "people" get to decide on the "basic terms" that will be chosen?
Click to expand...

Lol, now that's going to be a problem. How do you get a whole world full of people with different opinions and ideas to agree on a common language :)

However, when Gestuno was first used, at the WFD congress in Bulgaria in 1976, it was incomprehensible to deaf participants.
Click to expand...

37 years and not much has changed :P

ASL seems to be optimized for speed, whoever made the signs seems to have been thinking, how can I best facilitate really fast signing lol :)
 
Back
Top