Sign language(s)

Factual Questions
41

[quote=“Mark_Finn, post:39, topic:846329”]

I was watching Canada’s PM Trudeau giving his daily Covid-19 speech. There is a “signer” at the lower right. He switches to French at the 30:00 mark, with simultaneous (audio) translation. The “signer” is still there, signing. Is she still signing in English (picking up the audio translation), or in French (picking up the original)? I would assume English, since this was an English TV channel. (skip to about 29:30 to catch the changeover).

[/QUOTE]

The interpreter is using American Sign Language the entire time. There is a voice-over sometimes, over what I assume is the French portion, and the interpreter is interpreting something very close to the voice-over.

The interpreter never uses a manual code of English, nor LSF.

Many people in Quebec do know LSF, but they also know ASL. I knew a guy from Quebec at Gallaudet, and he was a native ASL speaker, even though he had been brought up with French as a literary language, and had studied English as a third language. He spent two years at the Northwest campus at Gallaudet working on his English reading and writing before he could move on the the regular curriculum at the main campus, but he eventually got his degree, did well in his English classes, and was planning on applying to grad schools. I don’t remember whether he knew LSF or not.

In regard to LSF and ASL being mutually intelligible-- there are a lot of initialized items in each language, where the initialized handshape is different, but everything else about the word is the same. So in context, it is very easy to guess what it means. It’s sort of like it’s very easy to understand what Brits mean when they say a word that is emphasized on a different syllable from the ones Americans emphasize, when it is in context.

You know, if someone said “I don’t like or-ee-GAN-o,” you might scratch your head, but if the same person said “I don’t like Italian food, because I don’t like or-ee-GAN-o,” it’s obvious.

So, it you count up items that are exactly the same, the number is low, but if you count up the ones that are similar enough to guess in context as well, you get a higher number.

I may overestimate, though, because personally, I can communicate just fine with LSF speakers, because I can fingerspell French words. My French is not fluent, but I can read French books pretty well, so I get by with filling in blanks with fingerspelling, and having words spelled to me.

42

Our distant ancestors must have been excellent signers before developing vocal language. I wonder how well they would communicate with modern signers.

43

Two words in different languages don’t need to be identical to be cognates, just recognizably similar as a result of a shared etymology.

44

I’m not too familiar with LSF, so I really cannot make any statements regarding its similarities to ASL or LSQ. However I have friends and I participate in Quebec Deaf community events, so I’m routinely exposed to LSQ (Langue des signes du Québec) and I find that while it is difficult to understand (I’m not perfect in my ASL either) I can pick up many elements due to shared linguistic cognates and by being observant. I’ve even come to prefer some LSQ words over their standard ASL equivalents -for example in ASL “beer” is the same word as “brown” (which is probably where it gets it’s semantic significance), while in LSQ “bière” resembles a mime of opening a can of beer. For coolness LSQ wins here :slight_smile:

If anyone is interested I think I’ll share two videos, one by ici Québec (in French sorry) that gives a behind-the-scenes look at live interpretation, explains a bit what LSQ is, and how LSQ differs from spoken French. The other video is today’s news conference by Justin Trudeau which has both ASL (bottom left) and LSQ (bottom right) live interpretation. Perhaps if you are observant you can compare and contrast the different styles.

45

It’s a portmanteau of coronavirus and stupid.

Coronavirus is, itself, a bit of a portmanteau. The first part of the sign is a splayed hand behind a fist, representing a corona, such as the sun has. The second part resembles a bunch of bugs going out into the world, like a virus or an infestation.

Stupid evolved from dumb, which is a fist moved to the forehead. The idea is that the person has a head like a rock. Idiot can be signed with a fingerspelled i held to the forehead.

Remember that “words” in ASL are conceptual and what any sign means depends on a lot of factors. New signs are most often built from existing concepts. So, while there’s no sign that has an etymological link to covidiot (other than fingerspelling it), the one we used above communicates the concept clearly.

Lots of spoken English puns fall flat in ASL for this same reason (though ASL has its own puns).

46

Right, so I’m having a hard time seeing how that would be a “loanword”. It’s a word that another language came up with for the same purpose, and using roughly the same method that English used to come up with that word, but it doesn’t in any meaningful sense “come from English”.

47

ETA: the woman in the video is using a slightly different sign than I usually see. The “bugs” aren’t quite as evident. I assume that the sign we see is a shortened version.

48

I can only answer that experts in the field use the term loanword for such things. Whether it technically is or isn’t seems a quibble.

49

Another way that ASL uses loanwords (loansigns) is to fingerspell the word in a highly stylized manner. Bank, for instance, starts with a b, has a little flourish, and ends in a k. The a and n are elided, and the sign, as a whole, specifically means bank. Several other signs operate on this same principle, like style, bus, and wild.

50

I’ve read (many years ago) a lovely memory by a deaf parent (deaf couple), of the joy of watching their baby’s hands make their first tiny little signs.

51

The “Stuff You Should Know” guys have an excellent podcast called “How Sign Language Works.” It was fascinating.

52

My friend Don is compiling the first really comprehensive dictionary of ASL-- it will include slang, archaic forms and profanity, which are usually left out of other dictionaries. He’s organizing it alphabetically by the initial handsign used in the lexical item, and he has his own, sui generis way of notating ASL. It’s worth noting he has a PhD in Linguistics, and a MA in Signed Communication from Gallaudet; also, a grant to compile the dictionary, which in order to get, he had to have an interested publisher, and he does, and has an advance from them as well. This is a serious project. Don has been Deaf all his life.

This is going to be the OED of ASL, and it’s at least a decade-long project. He’s got grad students working for him too, but he’s pretty demanding: almost all his students are Deaf or CODAs. He has a few who are very exceptional interpreting students.

I still don’t know if his notation will catch on, but I’m sure his way of organizing his dictionary will.

I saw a beautiful video of a very small Deaf baby in the arms of her Deaf grandmother, and the baby’s eyes lit up when the grandmother started using ASL with her. She tried to imitate her grandmother. They were uncoordinated baby gestures, but you could tell what she was trying to do.

I got a little dust in my eye.

53

Sweet! I hope I’m able to get a copy someday.

54

I’ve heard that infants are quicker to learn how to sign than to speak, and so even some hearing families have taken to using a simplified sign language with their infants.