Sign dialect?...

deafskeptic said:
Yeah. When I moved to Charlotte NC, I noticed the deaf talking about driving the grass. :crazy: WTF? Why on earth would people drive the grass? Turns out it's a regional sign for driving trucks.
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Yes, that's the SC sign for truck. :lol:
 
BSL got regionals signs too. Usually born Deaf would know most of regional signs and can adapt to whoever is signing.
 
Tousi said:
From the OP: "forehead level citation form indicates someone from rural area"

What the heck does that even mean????
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Judging from the answers we got, Tousi, I bet we can separate the ones who learned sign from the Deaf community from the ones that learned it in a classroom!:giggle:
 
I'm familiar with the use of regional signs, but I'm not as familiar with sign "dialects". It does makes sense, though. I've heard that Galludet alumni can recognize each other based on signing style.
 
So she is not deaf. I wonder why wouldn't they hire a real deaf person,
maybe because it is easier to communicate between the scenes
with a hearing one?

McKenzie did an excellent job for a hearie, though. I was almost convinced!

Fuzzy
 
Audiofuzzy said:
So she is not deaf. I wonder why wouldn't they hire a real deaf person,
maybe because it is easier to communicate between the scenes
with a hearing one?

McKenzie did an excellent job for a hearie, though. I was almost convinced!

Fuzzy
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Tv programs are looking for their best interests, and that case is usually something where money is involved. If media were to be as real as it could, it'd be more along the lines of a documentary and not as many people would watch it. :hmm:
 
naisho said:
Tv programs are looking for their best interests, and that case is usually something where money is involved. If media were to be as real as it could, it'd be more along the lines of a documentary and not as many people would watch it. :hmm:
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Right. Bones is entertainment.
 
Although it is funny that the lead character just happens to be an expert on whatever eclectic topic happens to be driving that story's plot.
 
Hi, I'm new on this site and, like Speedy Hawk, I'm from England. Yes, sign does have regional differences and, because sign was once prohibited (a meeting in Milan in 1880 or 1890), children learnt to sign in the schoolyard, hence the regional difference. So born deaf people can tell which school a person went to by the signs. For hearing people, your signs tell people which region you are from but, there again, if your teacher came from a different region to where he or she was teaching, that might confuse it a little bit.

Once you get into signing, you start to recognise the different signs for the same words e.g. I can say 'people' in BSL in about four ways, 'hospital' in two and the numbers vary from region to region too.

It's all good stuff!

Lottie.
 
jillio said:
Of course it isn't 100%, but it is a relatively accurate indicator of general area. Sure narrows things down from the entire geopgraphical U.S. lol But again, we are talking about entertainment, and I think I mentioned before that it is very dangerous to take anything presented in an entertainment format as fact.
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Even though some of the information in the episode was "odd" for those of us who actually know ASL - it did explain to the average watcher of the show that ASL and Signed Language IS a very complex language in which even small changes can "say" a lot.

The whole "forehead level citation" line was a bit odd, but it's (I think) a vast improvement from the derogatory and ignorant belittling of ASL and Signed Language as being some kind of "simple, uncomplicated waving of hands that anyone could learn in 2 weeks" that many of us have witnessed in "real life" and "on screen" for decades.
 
The whole "dialect" thing makes it a little harder to learn to sign. The book, and the DVD that I have from my class is from California, how ever I, and my teachers are from NY. The teachers will teach us different ways of doing the sign then what the book(and DVD) teach us.
 
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