Re: CHAT: My new treasure

En réponse à Adam Walker <dreamertwo@...>:

> That's odd.  I'd heard that Lyon SL was a seperate language from LSF.
>
Probably a hoax. Our famous deaf actress Emmanuelle Laborit learned LSF in
Lyon, and never had any problem having herself understood in Paris...

But maybe you're referring to the "français signé", which, like Signed English,
copies the spoken language down to its grammar. Well, this language is never
used by French signers, how consider it slow and cumbersome. There is also the
LPC (Langage Parlé Complet) which is used to facilitate lip-reading, by adding
hand movements near the cheeks to disambiguate lip movements. It's as much a
language as Braille would be the "Blind language". It's just a help to decipher
lip French.

> Have you ever seen the American finger alphabet?  If so could you tell
> if it
> was similar to the French?
>
The little I've seen ASL and American finger alphabet was on TV (and usually is
too fast for me to recognise single positions). But American finger alphabet
definitely looks like its French correspondent (that I remember a little for
having representations of it on the first dictionary my parents bought for me).
The hand movements look very much alike, but I don't know if they correspond to
the same letters. Though since English speakers use the same alphabet as French
speakers (with even less signs since they don't have diacritics, thus removing
the need to create new signs in case of borrowing from French), it seems
reasonable to me that Americans just borrowed the French finger alphabet.

Oh! About the issue of naming in sign language. I know that signers of LSF
refer to themselves (and to other people, even non-deaf) by names formed of one
or two signs standing for an obvious physical or mental characteristics of the
person, or a translation from the etymological meaning of their name in French.
Famous people usually get a single character to name them, rather than being
spelt. I was wondering if it's done the same way in other countries.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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