tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 28 12:35:45 1999
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Re: sign language
>Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 14:58:34 -0900
>From: Pillow <[email protected]>
>
>Yesterday I met the coolest lady- a language teacher at UAA. One of the
>languages with which she is fluent is ASL. I only know signed English (some)
>I've always been curious concerning how to fingerspell the "Q", "H", "tlh", "ng".
>etc. if I ever had the opportunity to sign with someone who was interested in
>Klingons. I've always used a "K" sign wiggling from the brow - over the head
>(like the sign for "skunk" but without the "S") for Klingon. Has anyone else ever
>thought about signed tlhIngan Hol?
Good folks to ask are Holtej (who has done MUCH work in ASL) and me (who
has done a teeny little bit). I believe Holtej uses the middle finger of a
K hand to draw ridges on the forehead to mean "Klingon"; works for me.
Dunno about other signs or fingerspelling.
> My professor friend hypothesized that since other languages have
>fingerspelling perhaps one of the equivalent sounds from a foreign language would
>have a hand sign for that sound which we could "adopt" for the
>glyph/letter/sound.that we do not have in English. I tossed in the idea for the
>large-case Q, S, H, I & D we could use the standard hand sign for that letter,
>but with a variation (a shake, a wiggle, a small shove forward?)
Could work, though of course fingerspelling is a pretty poor way to
communicate. Since S, I, and D don't contrast with lower-case versions of
themselves, I imagine they wouldn't need any special sign. Really only Q
does (perhaps a little circle?). H contrasts only with elements of
digraphs, which probably would be signed by flowing the letters into one
another, so would be okay.
>ps: my name sigh is the letter "p", backside of the R hand against the L side of
>the head/ear with head tilted laterally, like "placing your head on a pillow"
Makes sense!
~mark