New Zealand Sign Language Week is this week (May 5-11, 2008). That link has information, video signing samples, and downloadable PDF cards of the two-handed manual alphabet used for fingerspelling names and sometimes English words within the related British Sign Language (BSL), Australian Sign Language (Auslan), and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). (The unrelated American Sign Language [ASL] uses a one-handed manual alphabet adapted from French Sign Language’s.)

English? Wrong. It’s a trick question because there are three: English, Maori, and as of April 2006, New Zealand Sign Language (New Zealand Sign Language Act).

Now they’re having their First New Zealand Sign Language Week, May 7-13, 2007. There’s a lot of history and other information at the Official Site (via [New Zealand] Scoop Independent News).

This will coincide with Auckland’s 3rd New Zealand Deaf Short Film Competition on May 12, 2007 (deafshortfilm.co.nz). [EDIT (6/4/10): dead link]

How many people use New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL)? According to the New Zealand Office for Disability Issues (odi.govt.nz/what-we-do/nzsl-common-questions.html) [EDIT (6/4/10): dead link]:

Census 2001 data shows that 28,000 New Zealanders (including both Deaf and hearing people) use NZSL, and there are at least 210,000 deaf or hearing impaired people in New Zealand.

The above numbers are out of New Zealand’s 2001 3.7 million population (stats.govt.nz/census/2001-census-data/2001-popn-structure/highlights.htm). [EDIT (6/4/10): dead link]

NZSL users aren’t great in number or in percentage (0.76 percent). However, for a small number of deaf people, it’s their native language. For many others, a natural sign language is still the best way to gain access to knowledge, to communicate, and to learn written and even spoken English (or Spanish, Japanese, etc.). Lack of sufficient access to any language at all limits a person not just linguistically but cognitively and emotionally as well.

It’s hard to say which children can do well without sign language because deafness is extremely complicated. There are different:

• types (conductive vs. sensorineural, the latter brain/nerve problems cause highly distorted “underwater” sounds that aren’t likely to be improved by hearing aids)
• causes (congenital vs. adventitious, the latter including various illnesses, fevers, and accidents)
• ages of onset (pre-lingual child, post-lingual child, plus adult or elderly person)
• language environments (born to Deaf signing parents vs. the typical born to Hearing speaking parents)
• degrees of severity (minor to profound).

All of these factors, plus personality (introverted vs. extroverted, reflective vs. impulsive, empathy level, etc.) and other traits (general intelligence, linguistic intelligence, etc.) shape how someone learns concepts and language.

In addition, many deaf people naturally want to join the culture of people like themselves. This includes using the group’s language, a language that is comfortable because it has evolved for the hands and eyes.

If you want to see NZSL, there are short MP4/Quicktime videos at the sites of NZSL Week (seems to only work in Internet Explorer) and the NZ Office for Disability Issues.

See also my posts:

• 2006 BSL Learn to Sign Week (British Sign Language)
• Maori Language Week

See also elsewhere:

Europe: a continent of many sign languages from the European Commission

From the press release linked above:

Jim Kyle, Harry Crook Professor of Deaf Studies at the Centre for Deaf Studies said: “This is a first step to providing support to hearing people’s communication with Deaf people — anywhere and at any time. From our research, we have identified this point of contact as a major issue for Deaf people in shops and daily life. The next step for us will be to construct a phrasebook in order that more extensive interaction can be supported.”

Mobilesign

Signstation: BSL and Deaf awareness workplace materials

It’s nice to see technology working for Deaf people instead of against them (radio, movies going from readable intertitles to talkies, telegrams going to telephones). I hope we get something like this for American Sign Language (ASL), especially with the current work on sign-friendly video compression (see my post Better cellphone video for Deaf signers?).

But now University of Washington researchers are working to improve video compression with a project called MobileASL.

What makes this a language-related project is how the researchers are trying to compress the video. They’re exploiting how sign languages are perceived.

With sign languages the face is more important than the hands. When people sign, you look at their faces (with your acute “foveal” vision, as opposed to peripheral vision). The signer’s face carries not only the emotions of the signer but grammatical markers as well. With ASL, markers for yes-no questions, wh-questions (who/what/where/when/why/how), negatives, sentence topics, and conditionals are made with the face. The face also conveys commentary on whether something described is ordinary, of poor quality, and so forth.

Thus, instead of compressing the video evenly, the researchers are compressing the area around the signer’s face a little less and the area around the torso a little more. They’re also using somewhat fewer but higher quality frames of video (PDF research paper).

I hope they have success. I would think companies involved with mobile video phones would be interested in this targeted compression. Even if you’re watching people speaking English on video, you want to see their facial expressions and you just want to see their faces.

paperback (978-0-520-22976-1): 29.95, £18.95

hardcover (978-0-520-22975-4): $65.00, £41.95

E-book without DVD (1601295251): $15.95

Amazon.com with the table of contents, index, and first six pages of the introduction

ASL storytelling is fun to watch, probably even if you don’t know the language. The signs can get exaggerated, and there’s a lot of non-sign gesturing/mime thrown in.

ASL poetry can be quite beautiful. Sometimes the poems “rhyme” by using signs with the same handshape or signs with the same movement. Also, a lot of signs are normally made with only one hand (right for right-handers), but poets might alternate series of signs between the left and right hands to create a visual balance and flow.

ASL drama is like spoken-language drama except that the signing is bigger not louder (and only the vocal interpreters need microphones) and the stage “blocking” of actors’ movements always involves the audience being able to see their signing. The actors can’t utter lines of dialog with their backs to the audience unless they move their arms unnaturally far out to the sides.

Here’s something that may blow your mind:

With sign languages, the medium is the message, sort of (to hedge on a line from Marshall McLuhan). Actually, the articulation is the signal.

With spoken languages, you decode the message from the signal—sounds produced by air moving past or blocked during speakers’ articulation of their mostly hidden speech organs (tongue, vocal folds, etc.). With signing, you also decode the message from the signal, but the signal IS the signers’ articulation of hands and face that you are seeing. It’s as if a speaker used no air and you just watched the tongue move around to receive a message (not recommended, especially with strangers).

That’s also why Deaf babies of Deaf parents sign earlier than Hearing babies of Hearing parents speak, and why Hearing babies of Deaf parents sign earlier than they speak. Their hands are visible to them and easier to coordinate than the hidden, intricate speech organs. However, signing isn’t so easy when you learn it later. Just as with spoken languages, your signing can have an accent if you learn it later in life. It’s hard to get the smooth movements of native signers. Plus, the grammar can be very different from English, such as verbs like GIVE that move from abstract third-person subject to abstract third-person object.

British Sign Language isn’t related to American Sign Language. Not only are there different signs for the same concept, but the two languages also don’t use the same gestures for spelling names from written English. BSL has a two-handed system. ASL has a one-handed system developed from French Sign Language’s system (more on the history of FSL and ASL in my post Inuit Sign Language gathering).

Last week was 2006 International Week of the Deaf and America’s Deaf Awareness Week. The next Deaf Awareness Week in Britain is May 7–13, 2007 (UK Council on Deafness’s official site).

From Animation World Magazine:

Two Purdue University professors are studying how to use computer animation and virtual reality to teach deaf children in grades K through 4 about mathematics principles, and to communicate math terminology using American Sign Language. The reason for the project is that, for deaf children, reading instruction is delayed; therefore most kids in this age group cannot use traditional textbooks. They also aren’t able to take full advantage of secondary learning opportunities that non-disabled kids have, such as television and dinner table conversation, and their parents may not be fluent enough in sign language to teach them about math.

Project sites (with demos):

• Computer animation: Mathsigner
• VR: Signed Math in an Immersive Learning Environment (SMILE)

The VR of counting money in a toy store and so forth should be useful and fun. However, most deaf children have hearing parents and siblings, who often don’t sign. This can be isolating if the child can’t (or can’t yet) adequately communicate via oral-aural language. I just hope teachers and parents are careful not to take too much time away from interacting with other humans in a natural visual language in order to have limited interaction between the child and animated characters.

Just a few quick facts to be aware of:

1. There are many unrelated sign languages of the deaf in the world. American Sign Language is not related to British Sign Language or to spoken English (except for lots of borrowing of English terms as English did from Latin, Greek, and French).
2. Individual signs are not simple gestures; they have parts (handshape, location, movement, orientation) just as words do (location, stopping/continuing, voicing).
3. Sign language sentences have grammar, but it’s a grammar suited for visual perception with, for example, the simultaneous use of hand movements and facial grammar markers (yes-no question, conditional clause, negative, etc.) and the relocation of the signs in space to show subject or object.

More information about American Sign Language (ASL)

Online ASL video dictionary

I also have some American Sign Language and Nicaraguan Sign Language information in my post Inuit Sign Language gathering.

That’s great. Fifteen years ago in America we had the drama Reasonable Doubts with Marlee Matlin (deaf signer) and Mark Harmon (hearing). As I recall, Harmon’s character was supposed to have a deaf mother, so he knew how to sign. However, for the audience he had to talk and sign at the same time, so the talking was perfect and the signing was abbreviated. His signing was also jerky instead of fluid, so it was unpleasant to watch. They should have just said his character had studied some ASL (American Sign Language) in college years ago.

I wish there were more shows with signing deaf actors playing signing deaf characters. The pool of actors is small, but there are some very talented people out there.

This recognition would be in addition to Nunavut’s four recognized spoken languages: English, French, Inuktitut and Innuinaqtun. That would be six official languages in a large territory of fewer than 30,000 people. I hope it’s not too difficult for the government. However, it’s nice to see sign languages of the deaf being discussed, and possibly getting legal recognition as well.