Your gripe is just about a technicality, the mode of transmisison. Human non-verbal communication hasn't disappeared with the advent of written language.

__________________
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

I don't think it's a technicality. Cultures with writing have come to dominant the world. I'm not sure what you mean by the second sentence but I do agree that spoken language remains once writing appears, but very few thoughtful people want to stick solely with the spoken version if the written is also available.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

I meant that nonverbal communication doesn't have a written analog, yet has managed to survive.

__________________
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

Here's a link to a defense of ASL as an equivalent language, but like some others I have read, it doesn't address the fact that writing is not a part of it. It says it is as complex as a written language but that doesn't strike me as carrying much weight. It's probably as complex as any spoken language but there's no analysis of the differences between spoken/signed languages on the one hand and written language on the other.

http://www.wilbers.com/ASL.htm

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

What would Claud Shannon an Norbert Weiner say about all of this?

In their analysis, information transmission is only possible if the next symbol down the pipe has a probability associated with it. In a binary system for example, no information is transmitted if the signal output is always "1", no matter the input. Or as Jack Nicholson demonstrated, if the message, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" is typed repeatedly for hundreds of pages, the message is redundant and no information is received. Probably after 4 or 5 randomly chosen page's one would probably be tempted to ignore the remainder.

ASL conveys information and that information can either be redundant or rich in meaning and subject to endless interpretation.

Here's another way to look at information transmission. I understand that all of the Chinese languages use the same ideographs for the same information, but the spoken words may be unintelligible between two Chinese who don't share the same spoken language.

And finally, there are the apes that can learn ASL and teach it to other apes
but do not have a spoken language.


That should muddy the waters quite thoroughly.

B

Then I say change the name of the course to: 'Tissage de panier 101' and let them take anything.

I do think the real worth in a foreign language from an academic perspective is not to be understood but to understand differently, not to be able to read, which is plumbing, but to be able to imagine, which is design.

__________________
-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831799-post13.html
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831807-post14.html

Nicely done!

Clank
Clank
Clank
......
Clank
Clank
...Swish

__________________
-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831799-post13.html
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831807-post14.html

Here's another way to formulate my view. Literate deaf culture in the US involves two languages, ASL and written English. In France it is FSL and written French. If the point of requiring a foreign language is to become literate in a different culture, and ASL meets that requirement in the US, then the reverse should be true. An American deaf student should be able to count English as a foreign language. This makes no sense because they are already literate in English.
A deaf student who knows ASL could become literate in French by learning written French without learning FSL. However, if a deaf student wanted to understand literate deaf culture in France, they would need to learn FSL and written French. Similarly, if a French deaf person wanted to understand American deaf culture, they would need to learn both ASL and written English. This is the because the conventions, limits, constraints and history of written English is what literate deaf culture in the US is based upon.
This is surely unfair in one sense. Deaf people could have developed a sign language from which a written language arose. However, since there has been no language group with a majority of deaf people, they have had to learn two languages, sign, and the written language of the speaking majority.
You could look at this the other way and say that sign languages of the various spoken languages (ASL, FSL) etc are versions of American English, French, etc, but his is precisely what most analysts of ASL reject. But the reason they have to do this is because we make the unconscious assumption that literate culture has to be built on the spoken and written versions of the same language.
The purpose of a college education is to become more literate. Because of this, foreign language offerings have always been written languages. An American speaking student who studies ASL is studying a different signed language but will still be studying the literature of American English. If they study FSL, and French they will be studying a different signed language and a different literature (French) hence become literate in another language.
This is unfair to deaf people. It is unfair in two ways. Deaf people have to learn two languages to start with and once they enter the university, an institution fundamentally focused on literacy, they'll have to learn two more to understand another deaf culture. In addition, their fellow students cannot learn ASL to become literate in American English. The study of ASL by an American student is logically the equivalent of the study of another non written language.
Is anyone familiar with a similar debate about Braille? It shares a spoken version with the majority but has a different written version. Is Braille a felt version of the English alphabet, grammar etc or does it have a different written language for spoken English?

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

It just occurred to me that it is literally impossible to be literate in any sign language. One may be literate only in a written language.

One maybe conversant in ASL or conversant in English.

The View From Norway: Bilingual Ed

BY JOHN McWHORTER
November 9, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/43192

As the election returns are coming in, I am writing from the Arctic Circle.

I'm in Tromso, Norway, an extremely northern city whose university has me doing some lectures on linguistics.

I am keeping a close eye on the congressional elections. However, I am very, very far from home. In the existence I am living this week, as a linguist, I am struck by how different the Norwegian language here is from the Norwegian in books.

It reminds me that it was 10 years ago that Oakland's school board was putting together their resolution to "acknowledge" Black English in the schoolroom when teaching black children. The country erupted in jokes about teaching in "jive," but this was not what the Oakland school board meant. The resolution reflected a sentiment that had been kicking around for years, that the reason black schoolchildren so often have trouble learning to read is the difference between Standard English and the comfort dialect they learn at home.

So the idea was that the black student used to saying "I ain't got none and they be tellin' me it be my fault" is confused to encounter on the page "I don't have any and they tell me it is my fault." To wit, the claim was that black children would have an easier time learning to read if they encountered their home dialect on the page first, and then were ushered into Standard English as a "separate" variety.

On its face, this was not crazy. Too often, in practice, bilingual education has been a disaster in America. However, the problem has been one of implementation, not of philosophy. Worldwide, it has been shown endlessly that children learn to read more quickly when first taught in their native language and are gently transitioned into the dominant one.

The question is whether black students' reading scores were really due to their not being treated like Chicano students. That is where my sojourn to Norway comes in.

Here in Tromso, the local dialect is so different from the standard language that it leaves someone who thought he had mastered Norwegian frustrated. "What" is ka instead of hva. A word you use every two seconds like "I" is æ instead of jeg. Things like this go on and on, and they represent the exact same kind of difference as exists between Black English and the New York Review of Books — not a different language, but different all the same.

Yet Tromso schoolchildren here are not taught in the local dialect, nor are they given readers in the local dialect and "ushered into" the standard. No one has any problem with them using the local dialect at home or in the schoolyard. But in class, standard Norwegian is the order of the day.

And they learn it.

In fact, there was an experiment here a long time ago, where students given local dialect materials learned to read a little faster than students who were taught with standard materials. A little faster, that is. But for any number of reasons not much came of that, and overall, there is no educational crisis in Tromso or anywhere else in Norway.

Maybe it would be superlatively ideal if all Norwegian students were taught in their home dialects — of which there are dozens. But the expense that would entail is not seen to justify giving up a system which works fine anyway.

In the same way, a few studies have shown that black children sometimes learn to read a little faster when first given Black English materials. But the legions of black Americans of all walks of life who have done just fine without "Ebonics" tutelage suggests that this approach might be certainly ideal — but hardly necessary.

Many think that the fact that Black English carries a stigma as "bad English" makes it a different case from places like Norway. The idea seems to be that black students of a certain demographic resist Standard English because of a feeling that it's "not their party," and that we are in the dark about methods of teaching them to read.

Yet from 1967 to 1977, the Department of Education sponsored a study called Project Follow-Through, which focused on lower-income (re: mostly black and brown) children. "Holistic" and "creative" reading programs stressing self-esteem and the like were tested against a rigorous, good old-fashioned program stressing basic skills.

The results resoundingly showed that the basic-skills methods work very well, while the more tutti-frutti ones do not.

Yet the Ebonics controversy proceeded as if this project had never been done. Sadly, the visceral appeal of treating black children as "denied their rights as bilinguals" trumped teaching them to read via a method shown conclusively to work. Education schools year after year produce teachers unaware that, as it were, penicillin was discovered decades ago.

Time zones mean that my deadline is too early to know how well the Democrats have done. But to the extent that they continue letting the teachers' unions pass in pretending Project Follow-Through never happened, they are unworthy of the votes they got from anyone truly concerned with the state of education for the disadvantaged.

Mr. McWhorter is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Precisely my point.

The article you posted is about a similar kind of situation that deaf people find themselves in. Do deaf people have any more problem learning how to read than hearing people? Do they 'sound out' words or is there an alternative process whereby the written word is translated into a non-verbal sign before it is 'read'? If deaf people require non-standard techniques to be taught to read, then perhaps Ebonics children need non-standard techniques but I'm betting they dont.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Hi all,
saw the thread title and thought i'd add my 2c, but im thinking the recent posts have deviated somewhat..
2 of my cousins in England are deaf/mute. From about the age of 7 or 8 i was instructed in basic English SL. One uses both hands, the right hand being the more dominant. The 5 vowels are the tips of your thumb & fingers. You make the shape of each letter of the alphabet with 1 or both hands (most letters are strikingly similar to their written form). There are signs for words/actions that do not necessitate the spelling of each word letter by letter (eg if you kinda chop at your right hip, with your right hand, this is the signword for "work"). My cousin John would give me fotocopies of these to learn, so i could converse better ie quicker. When they were younger, they would come over and stay during summer holidays. John went to the Deaf Club in Dublin and found that Irish sign language is all done with just one hand, so i guess it does vary from country to country, even those who have English as their main language

__________________
'82 W123 280E

What do the Irish and English think about their sign languages in relation to the written languages they use? Do they think of Irish signing + written English as one language or two separate languages? I'm curious as to whether the current US view that they are two separate languages is unique to the US or widespread amongst deaf people/signers around the world. Does your cousin John have an opinion on this? Is sign language taught in schools and universities as a separate langauge alongside French, German etc. Does your cousin think it should be?

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Kerry, sadly John was killed by a DD over 10years ago (DD overtook a truck and slammed into John on his way to work. He was a beautiful guy.) His sister Louise also signs, her husband too, though he has partial hearing & speech, and their little girl, 4, is fluent in both) Louise was always a much better lip reader than John, dont know if some people are more inclined to lipreading or not..
I couldnt answer whether or not Louise thinks of them as 2 seperate languages, though its an interesting point, and i will ask her next time i see her. AFAIK in Ireland, sign is not taught in mainstream schools (as opposed to a school for hearing impaired), and with regard to college/3rd level/uni i would imagine it only to be taught within courses specifically relating to deaf education.
I am glad for having learned sign (even just my basic level), i would consider it an extension of one's native tounge, be it that you come from Ireland, Spain or China.
How does one converse with someone who doesnt speak ones language (the fact that other person can or cannot talk is irrelevant) ?
By gesticulating, making shape of an object with your hands, or making a noise replicating the sound

Tony

__________________
'82 W123 280E