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From: dgary@uncecs.edu (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Global Cultural Prototype
Summary: sign language: not international, what about the blind?
Keywords: sign language, ameslan, siglish, blind
Message-ID: <1989Oct18.234716.10196@uncecs.edu>
Date: 18 Oct 89 23:47:16 GMT
References: <8910171709.aa15054@granite.cr.bull.com>
Reply-To: dgary@ecsvax.uncecs.edu.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Organization: Datalytics, Inc.
Lines: 38

In article <8910171709.aa15054@granite.cr.bull.com> tobolsky@granite.cr.bull.com (Irene Tobolsky) writes:
>The problem with Esperanto or any other spoken universal language is that
>it does not break down the barriers for disadvantaged people.

For what it's worth, there are many blind and deaf Esperantists.  The
first person I ever saw reading high-speed Braille was doing so in
Esperanto.

>I boldly propose that a universal language is needed, and that this
>language ought to be based on sign language.  Sign language is easy to
>learn, regardless of your native tongue.  A cat is a cat whether the
>cat is in England, the United States, or Russia.  Furthermore, sign
>language lets us hearing people with both the deaf and blind
>community.

Unfortunately, there are numerous, incompatible sign languages in use
in various countries.  In the United States the main two are American
Sign Language (Ameslan) and Signed English (Siglish).  There is also
something called "cued speech" which combines lip-reading with manual
signs to distinguish otherwise hard-to-distinguish phonemes.  Signed
English is what it sounds like, but Ameslan is a wholly distinct
language developed and used by deaf and mute people.  It is
grammatically (and obviously verbally) distinct from all spoken
languages, and I'm told it is almost never learned to fluency as a
"second" language.  (Ameslan and Siglish do largely share vocabularly,
however.)

>I think that there will always be native languages in various parts of the
>world.

I hope this is true because I prize linguistic diversity, but the
extinction or near-extinction of many languages, including those of my
own Celtic ancestors, is a disturbing reality.
-- 
D Gary Grady
(919) 286-4296
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