Re: Sign Language problem

[Johanna Halbeisen Woodland ES <jhalbei@k12.oit.umass.edu>]

About the universality of sign language, I recalled reading about the
National Theater of the Deaf on tour...I just found the quote!

Here's the Oliver Sacks quote:

"the hundreds of sign languages that have arisen spontaneously all over the
world are as distinct and strongly differentiated as the world's range of
spoken languages.  There is no one universal sign lnaguage.  And yet there
may be universals *in* sign languages, which help to make it possible for
their users to understand one another far more quickly than users of
unrelated spoken languages could understand each other.  Thus a monolingual
Japanese would be lost in Arkansas, as a monolingual American would be lost
in rural Japan. But a deaf American can make contact relatively swiftly with
his signing brothers in Japan, Russia, or Peru - he would hardly be lost at
all.  Signers (especially native signers) are adept at picking up, or at
least understanding, other signed languages, in a way which one would never
find among speakers (except, perhaps, in the most gifted).  Some
understanding will usually be established within minutes, accomplished
mostly by gesture and mime (in which signers are extraordinarily
proficient).  By the end of a day, a grammarless pidgin will be established.
And within three weeks, perhaps, the sigher will possess a very reasonable
knowledge of the other sign language, enough to allow detailed discussion on
quite complex issues.  There was an impressive example of this in August
1988, when the National Theater of the Deaf visited Tokyo and joined the
Japan Theater of the Deaf in a joint production.  "The deaf actors in the
American and Japaese acting companies were soon chatting," reported David E.
Sanger in the New York Times (8/29/88), "and by late afternoon during one
recent rehearsal it became clear they were already on each other's
wavelengths."

from Oliver Sacks' SEEING VOICES: A JOURNEY INTO THE WORLD OF THE DEAF
--
Johanna Halbeisen
Woodland Elementary School(K-4)
Southwick, Mass
jhalbei@k12.oit.umass.edu