Re: SLIPA vs Gesture spelling

Steg wrote:
<<
Very cool looking!
Has anyone brought up Rikchik by comparison yet?
>>
Thanks.  I'd forgotten about Rikchik. I recall seeing
it a long time ago.  I'll definitely have to make
mention of it in my web page.

David wrote:

<<
This is great for a particular signed language.  This
is not
going to work for all signed languages.  This is
because
what's normal for a given signed language can differ.
>>
Yes, I agree. So I guess what I'm trying to do is
develop a _specific_ orthography for a _specific_
signed language with no intention of making that
orthography more generalized.

<<
So, my point is this: An ideal orthography or
romanization
system will be designed for a *specific* language, or
a
small set of closely related languages.  This is what
I *think*
you're doing, but I don't see how it's a
counterargument
to SLIPA.  When presenting your language on the web,
it might prove helpful to have an IPA so that people
can
learn how your orthography is used, but if you'd
rather
people fumble around with it, that's your decision.
It
seems that we've returned to your objection to "mouth
noises", even though we're talking about a signed
language (though research suggests that there really
is little difference).  If that's the case, then I'm
fairly
confident that there's no way to convince you that an
IPA is useful, and I won't try.
>>
I agree wholeheartedly with all of that.  This is not
meant to be a counterargument, and I certainly didn't
mean "vs" in a confrontational way, but in a
comparative way. :-)

SLIPA would be very userful as the IPA for my signed
conlang, and I would like to link to your page and use
your notation to spell out the possible ways in which
a particular consign gesture might be realized.  As
for "mouth noises", well, I just don't really
understand them very well, so that's why I avoid them.
 I suppose if I learned more about IPA and SAMPA, etc.
I would comfortable with it.  But for me something
written in one of those phonetic systems just looks
like Martian.

I don't doubt that an IPA is useful, in fact I'm sure
it's vital, but I'm just abysmally ignorant in that
branch of linguistics.

David asked:

<<
Indeed, very neat looking!  How do you make serifs,
etc., so well?  Or did you just modify existing
characters?
>>
What I did was to write the alphabet in Word at a very
large font size and then take a screen shot of that
and cut and paste bits and pieces of the Times New
Roman letters and stuck them together like Tinkertoys
to build new characters.  The next step, after the
whole collection of symbols is designed, is to turn
them into a font and map them to the standard
keyboard.

--gary

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