I`VE SEEN THE SIGN
For years
I`d been watching girls and boys signing and
had been
totally intrigued.
I must find out more about it, but as with
everything, I`m all great
intentions and plans and do bugger all
about it.
Thus, although
this is totally
personalised and
subjective, I`ve decided to put into words the things that
have
given me that `Saul on the
road to
Over the years I`d been amazed to see notices and warnings
on the walls of
the D.R.C with words missing, grammatical
errors and strange wording
(you`d
think THEY would have
put it right by now, God
alone knows who this mythical THEY
are) I have at last found
out over the years the answer to these mysteries.
Deaf people
don`t talk the same as hearing people, well
blow me
down what
a surprise, of
course they don`t its a different
language. It`s much simpler,
they don`t mess about with the
flowery bits
like `Do you
think we should go to the pub` its
straight down
the line PUB
GO?. But most of all its in facial
expressions, so
people need to see you when you
talk to them.
Anyway armed
with my camera
I beetled about in the main Hall
taking photos
of people signing, this will be frontier breaking
stuff thinks I. Needless to say it wasn`t. I
showed people the
prints "What
is being said in this one" says I , it`s
only part
of a sign or it’s between
words or they`re scratching their head
comes the
expert verdicts. However I
did make a few
discoveries, whenever
I took pictures of a group
signing it
always seemed
it was Juney who signed most; "Oh she`s
a real
chatterbox" I was told.
So, with
that in mind the camera group set forth to produce a
signed message
and do a proper job. It took a lot of time and
effort to
complete it, countless
consultations with sign
language users, viewing and editing sessions ,many
retakes
(which
is why,
oh ye with
keen eyesight, Paul is wearing
different
clothes), cutting,
mounting and sticking (I bet you can`t
see the join
on the backing). Thanks Sabina for the arrows.
It has
been during this time that I have
become much educated,
for instance
there are regional
accents in sign, signs are
adapted for
personal preference, left handers and right handers
can change things and there’s slang of
course. I`m
sorry if this
sounds like
I`m
stating the obvious
but it was real earth
shattering stuff to me.
During a
conversation with Anita,
our resident sign-language
interpreter, I realised
why there were
blank looks about the
phrase "GO
FOR IT". It means nothing to deaf people, apparently
have the same meaning, but it was signed as
requested. It seems
that it should have been better shown as
single sign. The index
finger tapped
twice under the eye. I`ve probably described it
wrong but its testament to
how easy it is to get the wrong
end of the stick.
C`est la vie.
Please let me have any comments and criticisms
coz I’m bound to
have explained some things
wrong.
Since then I've been very
fortunate in seeing a young woman
signing to pop records, she started with George
Michael's
Jesus
to a child. I was dying to see how Jesus is
signed,
it was signed by sticking
the index finger of one hand into
the palm of the other (the
nails I assume) she finished by
signing to Bohemian Rhapsody --
the word spectacular is a fair description
Ralph much enlightened
Edmunds going to say