International Sign Language

[InnocentOdion]

I'm not sure if this is the right place, but, what do you guys think of "International Sign Language", also known as Gestuno?

FENGYE DEAF WORLD-Sign Language Dictionary
Indigenous signs: cities

Do you think it will always be doomed to die a slow death? I think the idea of international sign is nice but impractical and probably impossible. It would be nice to have international communication as well as our own sign language though.

However, many problems would face the use of this, for example, obscene gestures vary--what is obscene in one is not in another, and some signs vary considerably (Chinese for eat is miming with chopsticks). Nevertheless, input please!

 

[Doug5]

i wish there was a universal sign language. itd be so cool to travel

 

[Berry]

Either oral or signed: If a universal language were created that replaced all the different languages that exist then much of the rich variety of human experience and culture would cease to exist. Ways of thinking: Ways we as humans are able to think.

One of the best ways to understand how we as a group (any group) think is to see how some other group thinks. Even many bilingual people do not actually think about the separate languages they speak. For instance in English one says "I like the flower", while in Spanish one says, "The flower pleases me", and in ASL you would be apt to sign "flower" with a happy expression. It would be easy to write a chapter exploring these differences and how they both influence and are influenced by the speaker.

However all languages could make themselves more accessible to outsiders by using more, not fewer, onomatopoetic sounds and iconic signs. One of the problems of language and jargon is that so much of them are designed to exclude and make it difficult for outsiders rather than to include and communicate with them.

One of the worst conceits of Ferdinand de Saussure, and one of the hardest for Stokoe to overcome, was his insistance that "real" language should be abstract and totally unrelated to the thing it represents rather than concrete and closely related. His disdain for children, foreigners, and primitives who would stoop to using "bow wow" to mean dog or "moo" to mean cow was a monument to his ego, not his good sense.

Anyway I think being multilingual is the fun, fascinating way to go.

 

[jillio]

Either oral or signed: If a universal language were created that replaced all the different languages that exist then much of the rich variety of human experience and culture would cease to exist. Ways of thinking: Ways we as humans are able to think.

One of the best ways to understand how we as a group (any group) think is to see how some other group thinks. Even many bilingual people do not actually think about the separate languages they speak. For instance in English one says "I like the flower", while in Spanish one says, "The flower pleases me", and in ASL you would be apt to sign "flower" with a happy expression. It would be easy to write a chapter exploring these differences and how they both influence and are influenced by the speaker.

However all languages could make themselves more accessible to outsiders by using more, not fewer, onomatopoetic sounds and iconic signs. One of the problems of language and jargon is that so much of them are designed to exclude and make it difficult for outsiders rather than to include and communicate with them.

One of the worst conceits of Ferdinand de Saussure, and one of the hardest for Stokoe to overcome, was his insistance that "real" language should be abstract and totally unrelated to the thing it represents rather than concrete and closely related. His disdain for children, foreigners, and primitives who would stoop to using "bow wow" to mean dog or "moo" to mean cow was a monument to his ego, not his good sense.

Anyway I think being multilingual is the fun, fascinating way to go.

Excellent. Language evolves to serve the cultural and cognitive needs of the population using it. Universal language means universal culture. How boring, and quite unlikely; next to impossible.

 

[Aleser]

What has been saidb above. Language is about far more than simply an expression of thoughts. I think I would be very sad if we attempted to "simplify language" as to make it more universal.

 

[Berry]

Language evolves to serve the cultural and cognitive needs of the population using it. Universal language means universal culture. How boring, and quite unlikely; next to impossible.

Language is about far more than simply an expression of thoughts. I think I would be very sad if we attempted to "simplify language" as to make it more universal.

I personally am saddened that so many languages have been lost, possibly not even recognized as languages, without having ever been studied. There is so much a linguist can learn about humanity by examining the wide diversity of languages; how they think, how they interact with the world arouind them, how they interact in their own cultural environment; that the extinction of a language is just as much to be mourned by a linguist as the extinction of a species is to a zoologist.

 

[JClarke]

have you ever known about the 'National Signs' which everyone can use for its conversations, like for example -- Melbourne Deaflympics in early 2005?

 

[Interpretrator]

I saw Gestuno in use at Deaf Way II. A presentation I attended was interpreted into ASL or English (depending on the presenter) and Gestuno. It seemed to work pretty well for what it was intended for: international conferences. As someone who only knows ASL I could understand it fairly well.

The thing is it's just not useful in everyday life. When I interact with signers from another country we don't need to use an international language, we just use extra gestures and so forth to find a pidgin that works.

I think Gestuno will always remain an academic language, one that presenters at these conferences might learn so that they can understand presentations wherever they go. But I don't ever see it becoming a common conversational language.