--- In sasxsek@yahoogroups.com, "Jim Gillogly" <scryer@g...> wrote:
>
>
> Two things seemed like odd choices to me as I started looking
> at sasxsek, so I thought I'd mention them early -- you only get
> one first shot at being a total newbie, and on the second
> read-through hese things may seem natural.
>
> The first is the choice of 'x' for schwa -- since this is not
> a vowel in any language I know, it takes an act of will each
> time to read it as one. Since 'y' is not in use for anything
> else, why not use that for the schwa? It is not used in all
> European languages, but then neither is 'w', so that shouldn't
> be a bar to using it in sasxsek.

Y was considered, then scrapped because it's likely to be confused
with [j] or [i]. X is also seldom used and the fact that is has a
crossed shape makes it a good marker for its usage in compounds. There
are no European languages that use X for a vowel, but I have run
across a Romanization for Thai that uses X as a vowel.

One criterion that I had was to limit the writing to 7-bit ASCII
characters for maximum compatibility with existing machines.

There is already a thread on this somewhere on a.l.a.


> The second is the manual alphabet. I read on some page or other
> that the signed version of sasxsek will be based on Gestuno, but
> I can't find a Gestuno alphabet on-line. However, I *do* know
> that most of the letters in sasxsek are the same as ASL, while a
> few are not. Why not? Is it because some of them are rude in
> other languages? A girl I knew who was studying sign in Japan
> couldn't bring herself to make a T, because it's the same as the
> gesture known in French as a "figue" -- evidently it has the same
> meaning in Japan. She used the sign shown on the sasxsek page.
> Are ASL letters to be considered allophones of the "real" signed
> letters of sasxsek? Is Gestuno accessible on the web?

The current plan is to *base* it on Gestuno (ISL), but other ideas are
still being considered. This part of the project is still in the very
early stages and right now carries a low priority. There are still
some planning issues involved and a lot of material to be compiled so
whatever is posted is tentative. I really don't recall right now
where I got the alphabet (DGS?), but remember finding out something
about one of the ASL letters being considered obscene somewhere so I
didn't want to use it.

The idea I have right now is to come up with signs for each of the
most basic SASXSEK roots and use the alphabet strictly for proper
names and maybe some of the less common vocabulary. I have been
hoping to find someone to help out some in this area. What little I
know of signing is just what I've found from researching on the web.

The biggest obstacle I'm encountering right now regarding the sign
language portion is just how to represent it visually. I can't seem
to get a straight answer regarding standards (if there are any) for
writing sign languages. I have some information regarding something
called "Signwriting", but also have seen where Hamburg Notation System
(HamNoSys) is pretty popular. I'm hoping to find a system that uses
simple ASCII symbols to represent the gestures rather than special
symbols requiring custom fonts as with these two.