BSL in its Social Context
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BSL in its Social Context
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Session 9: Language Change
Changes
in BSL
All living languages
change, and BSL is no exception. We have
already seen that older signers use different signing from younger singers, and we can see
this as an example of language changing. If
we are to understand BSL in its social context, we also need to understand its development
through time. Knowing about the way BSL has
been used and thought about in the past can tell us a lot about the way BSL is used and
thought about today. This session will
identify some of the changes that have occurred in BSL, and propose some reasons for these
changes. Problems with studying
the history of BSL Before we can consider
changes in BSL we need to look at some of the very real difficulties in historical
research in BSL.
The study of the
history of sign language is hampered by the lack of written records. There never has been a way of writing BSL. Languages with a literary tradition are much
easier to do historical research on. The
history of English, for example, can be traced through surviving texts that date back for
hundreds of years. These texts reveal the
history and development of English words, grammar, and even pronunciation. Historical sign linguistics cannot use a corpus of
BSL literature in the same way, simply because one does not exist. Although data about
BSL's history is limited, it is not non-existent. Information
about the past of BSL can be found from several sources.
It is possible to read about the language from written descriptions in
English, and we do have printed records containing some drawings of signs and some
photographs of signs. There is also some
film of British deaf signers dating from the turn of the century. With the widespread use of video now, we will have
a better record of BSL to pass on to future generations of historians. Another important
source of information is the linguistic knowledge of deaf people themselves. Sometimes linguists have the opportunity to see
the signing of very much older deaf people,
for example one deaf woman who was interviewed on television recently was aged 100. Information can also come from those members
of the deaf community with deaf grand-parents, and even great-grand-parents. They may have considerable knowledge of the ways
that people used to sign. A deaf person in
their eighties, who had deaf grand-parents, would know of the signing used by someone who
had been born as long ago as the 1840s or 1850s.
Sign linguists and members of the deaf community are now realising the
importance of recording linguistic information from older deaf people. Information written in
English: Written references to
signing in the past are not uncommon, but they were usually made by hearing people with
little detailed knowledge of the sign language that was used by deaf people. Many of these references simply mention that
signing occurred. There are, however, a few
known descriptions of the signs that were made. The
earliest known one of these dates to 1575. The
parish register of St. Martins, Leicester, mentions that in February 1575 a deaf man,
Thomas Tillsye, was married to a woman named Ursula Russel (who was probably hearing),
making his vows in sign. "The sayd Thomas,
for the expression of his minde, instead of words of his owne accord used these signs:
first he embraced her with his armes, and took her by the hande, putt a ring upon her
finger and layde his hande upon her harte, and held his handes towardes heaven; and to
show his continuance to dwell with her to his lyves ende he did it by closing of his eyes
with his handes and digginge out of the earthe with his foote, and pulling as though he
would ring a bell with divers other signs approved." One major drawback to
these descriptions is that it is not always possible to tell exactly how the sign was
made. In the Thomas Tillsye reference, the
parish clerk mentions that Thomas made a sign "digginge out of the earthe with his
foote". This might have meant that he
gestured digging with a spade, or simply that he dug his heel into the ground, or even his
toe. There is no way of knowing. Drawings of signs Illustrations solve the
problem of vague English descriptions, but illustrations have always been expensive to
produce in texts, and they are rare before the nineteenth century. Many of the early illustrations that we do have
are of the early manual alphabets. The
important exception is the signs drawn by Bulwer in the 1640s. However, these signs are not given as BSL signs. Rather they are signs that were used
internationally by hearing people as part of public speaking and they were thought to be
international, or maybe even universal. We
don't know, though, whether deaf people used some of these signs anyway. After all, BSL today uses some signs that are
similar to the gestures that hearing people use. These illustrations
show the form of the signs much more clearly than the written descriptions ever could. They also show some of the facial expressions that
accompanied the signs. However, they are only
vocabulary lists. There are very few
references to any of the morphological changes that might occur, or to the syntax of the
language. There are a few French
dictionaries of the signs used in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in
the Paris school, providing an excellent record of the sign vocabulary used in France. (These can be found in the RNID library in London:
I strongly recommend that you visit this library if you get the chance.) There is no known similar record in Britain
because of the different histories of the two countries' education systems. Thomas Braidwood, who ran the first non-private
school for deaf children in Britain, claimed to use an entirely oral method of teaching,
because he believed this gave him greater prestige. In
1809, his grandson Joseph Watson revealed that the teaching methods used in the school had
always used a combination of lip-reading, signs, fingerspelling, writing and pictures. If the Braidwood family had been more honest
earlier, there might now be a record of the signs that were undoubtedly being used in
Britain at the time. From the middle
nineteenth century onwards, there are several sets of illustrations of signs used by
British deaf people. Many deaf men were
trained to work as printers, and deaf people ran their own magazines and newspapers for
the deaf community. Occasionally these papers
carried illustrations of signs. A series of
pictures of signs drawn by a deaf artist named Ashe was published at the end of last
century. Another source of
pictures is texts published by missioners to the deaf, which often contained a few
pictures of signs. These signs were often
connected to religion, although some common signs were also shown. It is these illustrations that allow some
discussion of changes in signs over the last century. The history of BSL is
closely bound with the development of deaf education and the growth of schools for the
deaf. However, it is clear that deaf people
were signing before the schools and asylums for the deaf opened. Wherever there were enough deaf people to share
the language, signing was in existence. Although
large numbers of deaf people in rural communities have always been rare, deaf people have
gathered in larger towns and cities, and sign languages have been used there for
centuries. The industrial revolution caused
rapid increases in towns and cities. Deaf
people who moved into new towns and cities would have found other deaf people with whom
they could socialise. Pierre Desloges in the
1780s referred to the many deaf people in Paris who would meet and discuss all manner of
things in sign language, without having had the benefit of any education. In England, Pepys described a deaf servant who
signed to his master, George Downing, to tell him of the Great Fire of London in 1666. Changes
in attitude to the language
Widespread changes in
BSL occur because of the way that the language is officially accepted and used in public
places. BSL changed when schools started
using it nearly 200 years ago, and again when it was banned in schools. It has also changed as a result of TV broadcasting
it. CHANGES
IN BSL
Language change can be
internal or external. Internal changes arise from the internal,
phonological rules of the language. Rules
simplifying the language cause it to change, but there is no influence from outside the
language (from people or society). External changes are far more major and arise
because of outside influences of people or society. For
example the language users might borrow new signs from other languages because of language
contact, or may need to make new signs because of new inventions or new concepts. At a very basic level, a language may change
because the speakers have not had enough contact with adult speakers of their language. This last point can lead to huge changes in all
languages, whether spoken or signed. Changes in a language
may be at a phonological, lexical or syntactic level, but most of the information that we
have about BSL concerns changes in sign vocabulary over time. Although we know very
little about the syntax of BSL in the past, the little evidence that we have suggests that
it has always been different from the syntax of English, just as it is today. Internal
Changes
Internal changes in BSL
follow several different phonological patterns. In
all cases, the signs are becoming easier to articulate in some way. a) handshape changes When signs with two
hands have two different handshapes, the sign changes so that the two hands have the same
handshape. For example, the sign BETTER used
to be made with hands of two different handshapes (you might still see this in use
sometimes). The active hand was a fist with
an extended thumb , and the passive hand was a fist with an extended forefinger. Another example is in
the sign MINICOM. It is now not uncommon to
see both hands with the "TELEPHONE" handshape.
This is not so in the citation form of the sign, but occurs commonly in
conversational use. There is also a change in
movement, as may be seen in the next point. b) movement changes If a sign has two
movements, it may drop to one. For example an
old sign CENTRE used to have two movements: firstly, the active hand would circle above
the upturned passive palm, and then it would move down to contact the centre of the palm. The initial circling movement has now been
dropped, and the modern sign now simply has a contact of the active hand against the
passive palm. This loss of movement
is also seen in compounds. Think about
MINICOM again. The citation form of the sign
has the active hand holding still, and the passive hand moving left and right, while the
fingers wiggle. In other words, there is both
an external and an internal movement of the hand. In
conversation, however, both hands move left and right, alternately, and the internal
wiggling of the fingers on the passive hand is lost. c) location changes If there are two
locations, it may drop to one. An old form of
the sign GIVE shows the hand first touching the chest, and then moving from neutral space
near the signer's body in the direction of the recipient.
This reduction in
specific locations is also seen in compounds. For
example, the sign BELIEVE is historically a compound of THINK and TRUE. However the forehead location of THINK has now
been lost and the sign BELIEVE begins in neutral space.
The same is true of PROMISE, which is formed from SAY and TRUE. Here, the initial location of SAY has been reduced
to neutral space around the upper chest. If there are two
separate signs in the compound sign, one can be dropped altogether. For example, ENVY used to have two parts, but the
second part (bringing the active hand up the chest) has now been dropped, and only the
first part (the curved forefinger against the mouth) has been kept. The signs EXPECT and
CHECK have also lost a part, although in these signs, it is the first morpheme that has
been lost. In EXPECT, the components were
THINK and MAYBE, while in CHECK, the components were SEE and MAYBE. In both cases the initial SEE has been deleted. The difference now in primarily in location of the
hand that originally meant MAYBE. Signs also tend to move
away from the upper arm and down towards the hand. For
example, TROUBLE used to be signed on the fore-arm and now it is signed on the back of the
hand. d) changes in the number
of hands If there are two hands,
it may drop to one. There is a general
tendency for signs to become one-handed. Old
signs such as AWAKE, DREAM, FISH and FARM were all made with two hands, but now they are
all commonly made as one-handed signs. We
also see this reduction in casual signing. e) changes to unmarked
handshapes Handshapes may alter to
become one of the "unmarked" handshapes of a sign language. These are handshapes that are most common, most
easy to distinguish from other handshapes, and are usually learned first by children
acquiring the language. These changes are
particularly seen when an initialised sign is used but the letter handshape is marked
(that is, more complicated), so it is changed to an unmarked handshape that is not linked
to the manual alphabet. This is seen where
the one-handed manual alphabet is used, but also in BSL.
For example, the letter handshape for -m- is very marked (there are very few
signs in BSL that use it, except maybe BOY-SCOUT) and yet there are lots of initialised
signs that use the -m- handshape. However, if
you look carefully, you will see that the active hand is a 'B' hand, not the normal
"official" -m- handshape. The B
hand is unmarked. f) change in hand orientation It is also a trend for
signs made on the back of a passive hand to be made on the palm of the passive hand. THEATRE and SET-UP used to be made on the back of
the hand, but are now often made on the palm. All these changes are
internal changes, brought about by the rules of BSL phonology, making the signs easier to
articulate or to understand. External
changes, however, are much more noticeable, and more fundamental. External
Changes
We have to ask why
languages change. It's not enough to note
that they do change. We have to come up with
some reasons. For example, most
people will probably recognise one list here as being "old-fashioned English
words", and the other list as being ones more in use now. The question is why the change occurred. Some people might be surprised to learn what this
reason is.
Changes
in technology
One cause of lexical
changes in BSL is change in technology. We
saw, when we looked at differences between older and younger signers that the appearance
and way handling of equipment changes as the technology changes, and iconic signs may
change to reflect this. When computers first
entered everyday conversation, the sign reflected the spinning spools of the magnetic
tapes then used. Now that computers have
become common in most office environments, in the form of word-processors or
data-processing machines, the sign has changed to focus upon the keyboard. New
Inventions and new concepts
New signs have to be
introduced because of new inventions or new
ideas. Recent new concepts
include the fax machine, communications satellites, the national lottery, television soap
operas, cochlear implants and more abstract ideas new to users of BSL, such as community,
discrimination and integration. In all cases,
the language has had to change because the outside world has changed: society has caused
the language to change because society has changed. Old signs also die out. For example, signs such as PAWN-BROKER and ALMS
are no longer in widespread use, although they are given in a very basic list of signs
from 100 years ago.
Changes
in attitude to the language Widespread changes in
BSL occur because of the way that the language is officially accepted and used in public
places. BSL changed when schools started
using it, and again when it was banned in schools. It
has changed as a result of TV broadcasting it. One theory of language
change holds that children make the language change because they don't copy their parents
properly when they learn languages. This
theory is called the Wave Theory, and proposes that language changes a little bit with
each generation and then remains stable until the next generation changes it again. There is possibly some
of this occurring in BSL, because of the lack of continuity between generations of
signers. Many deaf children have, in recent
generations, learnt their sign language from other children (often the children of deaf
parents) rather than from adult language models. Deaf
children are often less fluent in BSL than adults, so the language changes.
The history of the
British manual alphabet We have talked about
the history of BSL, but now we need to look at the
history of the manual alphabet. Today the
manual alphabet is an important, if peripheral, feature of British sign language, and yet
it was introduced solely for the purpose of teaching deaf people English. Records show that manual alphabets were used by
hearing people long before they were introduced to deaf people. In fact, it is probably safe to assume that manual
alphabets are almost as ancient as sign languages. We know that there have
been two different major types of manual alphabet used in Britain. The ancestor of the modern system is dated to
1698, with the publication of "Digiti Lingua", and by 1720 the modern system was
reasonably well established. Before 1698,
however, a different manual alphabet, "arthrology", was in use. The "arthro" bit means
"joints" (like arthritis), and we call these alphabets arthrological because
letters of the alphabet were put on different joints of the fingers and palm of the left
hand. The index finger of the right hand
pointed to the letters in succession to spell out words.
Although this alphabet system was used by deaf people, its main use was by
hearing people who needed to communicate secretly.
The best-known
arthrological system in Britain is probably in Dalgarno's 1680 publication
"Didascalocophus". Dalgarno is
famous for being the first to publish a picture
of the first manual alphabet for deaf people that we know of (it is also the last because
the radical changes to the manual alphabet occurred soon afterwards), but the
arthrological system had been in use in the British Isles for centuries before this. John Bulwer has been
credited with making the earliest mention of fingerspelling in Britain, in his publication
"Chirologia" in 1644. These manual
alphabets, however, were not like that printed by Dalgarno, and were of a very different
system. Bulwer's manual
alphabets arranged various international gestures used in oratory (like "public
speaking") so that they could be used to represent letters of the alphabet. Bulwer also made his alphabets so people could
communicate in secret. For Bulwer,
however, the emphasis was on the use of gestures as a complement to speech rather than an
alternative. The manual alphabet that Bulwer expected to be used
by deaf people is mentioned in "Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumbe man's
friende", which Bulwer wrote in 1648. Unfortunately,
it is not illustrated, nor even described. In
"Philocophus", Bulwer mentioned a deafened man, Master Babington of Burntwood,
who communicated with his wife using "arthrologie", by pointing to areas of the
hand and the finger joints. Although Bulwer
did not give any examples of this arthrology, it would be reasonable to assume that the
system was similar to the one described by Dalgarno over 30 years later. However, it is possible
to take this same "arthrological" manual alphabet back even further, to John
Wilkins' "Mercury, the Swift and Silent Messenger" (1641). The book is a work on cryptography, and
fingerspelling was referred to as one method of "secret discoursing, by signes and
gestures". Wilkins said: "Hence it is easie
to conceive, how the letters, as well as the numbers, may be thus applyed to the severall
parts of the hand, so that a man might with divers touches, make up any sense, that hee
hath occasion to discover unto a confederate. "This may be
performed.... by any... way of compact that may bee agreed upon. As for example.
Let the tops of the fingers signifie the five vowels; the middle parts, the
first five consonants; the bottomes of them, the five next consonants; the spaces betwixt
the fingers the foure next. One finger laid
on the side of the hand may signifie T. Two
fingers V the consonant; Three W. The little
finger crossed X. The wrist Y. The middle of the hand Z." (1641:116-117) In this passage,
Wilkins described the five vowels as exactly the same as the vowels in the modern British
manual alphabet. This means we can trace the
modern British manual vowels back to at least 1641.
Although Wilkins did not provide an illustration of the manual alphabet, a
possible reconstruction can be made.
Wilkins referred to
deaf people using signs and gestures, including arthrology.
He mentioned that arthrology was of "especial note for [its] use and
antiquity". It is clear that Wilkins
knew that the manual alphabet he described was used among deaf people, as well as by
hearing people. There was no suggestion that
he invented this manual alphabet. In fact,
evidence suggests that Wilkins' manual alphabet was descended from one that can be traced
back to the previous millennium. Wilkins also mentioned
Bede's description of some of the systems of fingerspelling used by the Romans and Ancient
Greeks. These systems were closely linked to
the counting systems of these two cultures. If
the Romans wanted to communicate secretly, they held up the number of fingers that was the
number of a letter in the alphabet. So, for
example, if you wanted to warn someone that a person was "bad", you would hold
up 2, 1, 4, because b=2, a=1 and d=4. What Wilkins did not
mention, though, was that a manual alphabet, very similar to his (and most unlike the
unsophisticated systems the Romans and Greeks had) has been in existence in Britain and
Ireland, since as early as the sixth century BC. An alphabet, called
Ogham, was used at this time by Celtic people called the Goidels, and was still being used
at the time of the Roman occupation of Britain. It
consisted of twenty letters and was clearly used by Druids, especially in Ireland, but
also in Britain. The aim behind using this
alphabet manually was secrecy (the Druids had a lot of secrets....). The written letters in this alphabet are grouped
into four sets, each of five characters. Robert
Graves took this as evidence that the written alphabet was actually designed this way
because it was easy to use manually. The
letters in each set are written using a number of nicks made against a base line. Graves believed that the number of nicks shows
which finger is used, and the angle and position of the nick relative to the base line
shows the position of the letter on the finger. The
forefinger of the right hand would have pointed out the letters, just as in the system
described by Wilkins.
In another method
described by Graves, "leg Ogham" (or Cos-ogham),
the shin was used as the base line, and the fingers of the right hand were made to
represent the nicks, according to the number and angle of fingers laid across the shin. There is an echo of this in the system described
by Wilkins. The later alphabet had more
letters than the Ogham alphabet (26, instead of 20) and they could not all be placed
conveniently on the hand. Wilkins suggested
laying different numbers of fingers across the side of the hand for some letters, just as
they were laid across the shin in Ogham. The letters are
arranged very differently in the two arthrological systems described by Graves and
Wilkins, but the later system must have developed out of this earlier one. We know that the Ogham manual alphabet was being
used in Celtic monasteries in the early centuries of the Christian era, so the educated
people of the time would have been aware of it. This arthrological
system was definitely used in the early education of deaf people in the mid-seventeenth
century. The two first educators of the deaf,
John Wallis and William Holder both refer to fingerspelling, and it is most likely that
they both used this arthrological system. A method of
representing letters by using the whole body rather than just the hands coexisted with
arthrology. La Fin's "Sermo
Mirabilis" (1692) was an alphabet that used body parts whose initial letters could be
used to spell out words, (eg Brow, Cheek, Deaf Ear, Forehead etc). Aware that this would only hold for English, La
Fin also produced a parallel alphabet which could be used in Latin. He claimed that the same method could be used for
any language such as French or Dutch, although he did not make any suggestions for these. Although body parts were used to represent
consonants, the vowels were still placed on the ends on the fingers. Two suggestions were given for "i",
however. The middle finger of the passive
hand could be substituted by pointing to the eye, as a pun on the sound of the letter.
The use of these
"body alphabets" was never widespread, but arthrology remained popular even when
alphabets using distinctive handshapes were in common use.
In 1883, Alexander Graham Bell tried to re-introduce a modification of
Dalgarno's manual alphabet. This version was entirely upon the surface of one hand, but it
read systematically, from left to right, down the hand, making no exception for the vowels
(unlike all the early English manual alphabets which placed the vowels on the tips of the
fingers).
The
Fore-Runner Of The Modern British Manual Alphabet "Digiti Lingua", published anonymously
in 1698, presented the first manual alphabets with most letters represented by distinctive
hand arrangements. The vowels, however,
remained at the tips of the fingers as in previous alphabets. The roots of the modern British two-handed
alphabet clearly lie in this publication. The
author himself was unable to speak and recommended the use of the manual alphabet for
anyone incapable of speech, for whatever reason. He
suggested that it might be used on occasions when silence and secrecy were needed, or
purely for entertainment. He made no explicit
reference to the deaf.
It is probably
significant that the author of Digiti Lingua used the alphabet himself for everyday
communication and so it was far more practical than La Fin's or even the old arthrologies
which are hard to read from any distance or at much speed.
The author's main
concern was for secrecy. This isn't really
surprising because England in the 17th century was full of spies and people needed to keep
secrets. In the name of secrecy, the author
offered two sets of 26 manual letter hand-arrangements arranged into alphabets, with the
recommendation that the reader should allocate different letters to the different
handshapes, or even make up new ones. Although these
alphabets were a radical departure from the previous arthrological styles, one purpose
seemed unchanged. It is clear that the
alphabet was still not considered something which should be standardised to enable
strangers to communicate. Digiti Lingua may be
seen as a bridge between the old manual alphabets and the new. Nine of its letters can be traced to earlier
versions, and many of its handshapes can be seen in the modern version. Within the two sets of 26 handshapes provided by
Digiti Lingua there are handshapes which now represent 17 letters in the British manual
alphabet. Although the author of
Digiti Lingua did introduce several new iconic forms, a very visual manual alphabet would
have given away the secrets, so it is hardly surprising that the letters were disguised. Seventeenth century cryptographers often used the
technique of giving new meanings to the different letters of the alphabet, so it should
not be surprising that Digiti Lingua did the same. Despite
this, the representations of "m", "n", and "z " were so
iconic that they were given in both versions. The two forms of -q- in
Digiti Lingua have both been used extensively since that time, one predominantly in
Scotland and the other in England and Wales. Today
only the more iconic form is used in fingerspelling although the old Scottish form can
clearly be seen in initialised signs such as QUARTER, QUIET and QUESTION. However, this disappearance of the Scottish -q- as
part of fingerspelling is only recent. Clark
Denmark remembers seeing it being used during fingerspelling, when he was a child in
Glasgow.
The
"Modern" British Manual Alphabet
The modern British
manual alphabet was printed for the first time in a plate published in 1720. The letters are very similar to those used today.
Defoe's Manual Alphabet In 1720 Daniel Defoe
published "The Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell", The 1720 edition
contains the plate that is very similar to the modern alphabet (although -j- is missing)
with only four other letters different from those used today. The 1732 edition of the same book contains a
different, but basically similar, illustration of the manual alphabet. In this later version, a -j- has been added and
the -v- has changed to become more like the one that is used today.
Thus, somewhere between
1698 and 1720, our manual alphabet became fixed in roughly the form we know it. It is unlikely that Defoe was the author of this
manual alphabet, and it is more likely that
he learned of it from Duncan Campbell, or perhaps Wallis or maybe it was already in
general use at the time. Up until this time in
England, manual alphabets were not considered to be universal systems. Throughout the
seventeenth century, the aim of manual alphabets was to permit people (deaf or not) to
communicate with their immediate friends, co-conspirators or family, and for communication
between tutors and their deaf pupils. In this
last situation, if speech was the aim of the education, then a manual alphabet may have
only been seen as a makeshift stop-gap. For
this reason, perhaps, authors describing these alphabets often left the option open for
the readers to devise manual alphabets of their own.
It was only with the growth of more widespread education for deaf people and
the development of a British deaf community that it became necessary for one standard form
of the manual alphabet to be used. Changes in the British
Manual Alphabet since 1732 After 1732, the
citation forms of letters given in charts of the British manual alphabets remain basically
the same, although some letters do vary more than others.
A collection of charts
from 1698 to the present day shows some of the developments. We will look at them in the practical session, and
think about the changes we can see. It is also important to
be aware that the charts may not accurately represent the handshapes occurring in fingerspelling of deaf people at the time. The charts published today show only one form for
letters which, in practice, may be formed in a variety of ways. The BSL/English Dictionary makes this point very
clear when it gives several forms for several manual letters. There are also regional, age and idiosyncratic
differences to take into account. Bearing
these caveats in mind, however, the drawings of manual alphabets preserved since the early
18th century give us a guideline as to what was taught at the time, even if the teaching
was not put into conversational practice. Two-handed
manual alphabets from around the world
Although the one-handed
manual alphabets have spread to become dominant (mainly because of the combined influence
of the Americans and the Roman Catholic church - both of whom use the one-handed system)
two-handed manual alphabets are found in other parts of the world. In some cases they
derive from, or are the same as, the British manual alphabet, and in other instances they
have very different manual letters and do not share a common history. There are two-handed alphabets in former British
colonies, like India, Australia, New Zealand, Uganda and South Africa. None of this should be very surprising. In some of these countries there is a one-handed
alphabet too. These have usually either come
from Catholic schools or American "aided" teachers. In the Indian system, the vowels are different,
and more iconic. We will see that iconic
vowels are very common in other alphabets apart from the British one. There are also
two-handed alphabets in the former Yugoslavia, Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean,
Indonesia, Norway, Germany and the USA. The Norwegian manual
alphabet today is one-handed. However, many
older deaf Norwegians know another, two-handed, manual alphabet. This is very similar to the British system,
although, again, the vowels provide more iconic representations of the written letters.
It may seem odd that
there is a two-handed American manual alphabet,
when the American one-handed system is so dominant in the world, but most deaf people over
40 know it there. It seems only the hearing
educators who don't know it! In fact many
Americans would like to bring the two-handed one back because it is less strain on the
eyes, and hands. Again, it is similar to the
British one, except for the vowels. It makes most sense to
suggest that the two-handed manual alphabet has spread widely because it is easy to relate
to letter shapes, and easy to use, but that the vowels are changed in other countries
because they are not iconic. Britain has held
on to them, perhaps because the schools used the alphabet.
In other countries where the two-handed alphabet did not have the approval
of the authorities, the "difficult" vowels have been changed to something
easier. |
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