Manually coded language: Difference between revisions

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{{Use American English|date = February 2019}}

{{short description|Signed phonetic representations of verbal languages}}

{{Use American English|date = February 2019}}

{{more citations needed|date=March 2019|collins=dictionary online}}

'''Manually coded languages''' ('''MCLs''') are a family of gestural communication methods which include [[fingerspelling|gestural spelling]] as well as [[constructed language]]s which directly interpolate the grammar and syntax of oral languages in a gestural-visual form - thatform—that is, [[sign language|signed]] versions of oral languages. Unlike the sign languages that have evolved naturally in [[deaf communities]], these manual codes are the conscious invention of [[Hearing (person)|deaf and hearing educators]], and as such lack the distinct spatial structures present in native deaf sign languages.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Spencer |first1=Amy |last2=Glover |first2=Cathy |title=A Continuum of Communication: Manually Coded English Systems |url=https://www.mecdhh.org/uploads/Pdfs/Webinars/MCE.pdf |website=Maine Educational Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing |access-date=2021-03-15 |date=2015-06-15}}</ref> MCLs mostly follow the [[grammar]] of the oral language—or, more precisely, of the written form of the oral language that they interpolate. They have been mainly used in [[deaf education]] in an effort to "represent [[English language|English]] on the hands" and by sign language [[Interpreting|interpreters]] in K-12 schools, although they have had some influence on deaf sign languages where their implementation was widespread.

==History==

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In seventh century England, the years of (672-735), [[Bede|Venerable Bede]], a [[Benedictine]] monk, proposed a system for representing the letters of the [[Latin script]] on the fingers called fingerspelling. [[Monastic sign language]]s used throughout [[medieval Europe]] used [[manual alphabet]]s as well as signs, and were capable of representing a written language, if one had enough patience. Aside from the commonly understood rationale of observing a "[[vow of silence]]", they also served as [[mnemonic]]s for preachers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://exhibits.library.yale.edu/exhibits/show/deafculture/manualsystems|title=Manually Coded Language and Alternate Sign Systems · Deaf: Cultures and Communication, 1600 to the Present · Online Exhibits@Yale|website=exhibits.library.yale.edu|language=en-US|access-date=2017-09-06}}</ref> These manual alphabets began to be used to teach the deaf children of royalty in 17th century Spain. Such alphabets are in widespread use today by signing deaf communities for representing words or phrases of the oral language used in their part of the world.

The earliest known attempt to develop a complete signed mode of a language which could be used to teach deaf children was by the [[Abbé de l'Épée]], an educator from 18th century France. While the Deaf community already used a sign language, (now known as [[Old French Sign Language]]), Épée thought it must be primitive, and set about designing a complete visual-gestural system to represent the concepts of religion and law that he wanted to impart to his pupils. His system of {{Lang|fr|signes méthodiques}} (usually known in English as Methodical Signs) was quite idiosyncratic, and although it was not a strict representation of French, its success laid the groundwork for the "signed oral languages" of today. The real proliferation of such systems occurred in the latter half of the 20th century, and by the 1980s manually coded languages were the dominant form of communication used by teachers and interpreters in classrooms with deaf students in many parts of the world. Most sign language "[[interpreting]]" seen on television in the 1970s and 1980s would have in fact been a [[transliteration]] of an oral language into a manually coded language.

The emerging [[recognition of sign languages]] in recent times has curbed the growth of manually coded languages, and in many places interpreting and educational services now favor the use of the natural sign languages of the Deaf community. In some parts of the world, MCLs continue to be developed and supported by state institutions; a contemporary example is [[Arabic Sign Language]]. Some MCL systems, (such as the [[Paget Gorman Sign System]]) have survived by shifting their focus from deaf education to people with other kinds of communication needs.

==Criticisms==

The use of MCLs is controversial and has been opposed since Épée's time by "[[oralism|oralists]]" who believe Deaf people should speak, lipread and use [[hearing aids]] rather than sign—and on the other side by members of the American Sign Language (ASL) community (see [[Deaf culture]]) who resist a wide or exclusive application of MCLs for both philosophical and practical reasons. English is not fully able to express the ability of those with disabled hearing to communicate,{{opinion|date=April 2021}}, and just as written forms of spoken languages are useful but cumbersome for daily communication, these manual codes cannot supplant a natural Signed Language{{opinion|date=April 2021}}. Nevertheless, elements of these systems have had some influence on deaf sign languages (see [[Contact sign]]).

Research{{by whom|date=April 2021}} in the U.S. has shown that [[manually coded English]] is usually applied incompletely and inconsistently in classrooms:{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}: Hearing teachers tend to "cut corners" by not signing word endings and "[[function word]]s", most likely because they slow down the pace and distort the phrasing of the teacher's natural speech. The result is a kind of "[[Pidgin Sign English]]" which lacks the grammatical complexity of both English and [[American Sign Language]].

==Major approaches==

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These systems ("[[Signed English]]", "Signed German" and so on) were the vehicle for the world-wide explosion of MCLs in deaf education in the second half of the 20th century, and are what is generally meant by the phrase "manually coded language" today. They aim to be a word-for-word representation of the written form of an oral language, and accordingly require the development of an enormous vocabulary. They usually achieve this by taking signs ("[[lexicon]]") from the local deaf [[sign language]] as a base, then adding specially created signs for words and word endings that do not exist in the deaf sign language, often using "initializations", and filling in any gaps with [[fingerspelling]]. Thus "Signed English" in America (based on ASL) has a lexicon quite different from "Signed English" in Britain (based on [[British Sign Language|BSL]]), as well as the Signed Englishes of Ireland, Australasia and South Africa. "[[Signing Exact English]]" (SEE2) was developed in the United States in 1969, has also been taught around the world, and is now used in deaf schools in [[Singapore]], and taught in classes by the Singapore Association for the Deaf.<ref>[http://www.sadeaf.org.sg/Sign%20Language.htm Sign Language] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070302160237/http://www.sadeaf.org.sg/Sign%20Language.htm |date=2007-03-02 }} (Singapore Association or the Deaf website)</ref>

===Mouth–HandMouth–hand Systemssystems===

Another widespread approach is to visually represent the [[phoneme]]s (sounds) of an oral language, rather than using signs for the words. These systems are sometimes known as "Mouth Hand Systems" (MHS). An early example was developed in Denmark in 1903 by [[Georg Forchhammer]].<ref>Birch-Rasmussen, S. (1982). ''Mundhandsystemet.'' Copenhagen: Doves Center for Total Kommunikation.<br>Reynolds, Brian Watkins (1980). ''Speechreading training related to the Danish mouth handsystem for adventitiously hearing impaired adults.'' Ann Arbor : U.M.I. 1980 - 145 p. Dissertation: Purdue Univ.</ref> Others include the Assisted Kinemes Alphabet (Belgium) and a [[Persian language|Persian]] system developed in 1935 by [[Jabar Baghtcheban]]<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20091027133902/http://geocities.com/abehmanesh/IranDeaf.htm Deaf Way II Presentation On Iranian Deaf Culture], by Abbas Ali Behmanesh</ref>—in addition to the most widespread MHS worldwide, [[Cued Speech]]. As the entire set of phonemes for an oral language is small (English has 35 to 45, depending on the [[dialect]]), an MHS is relatively easy to adapt for other languages.

Cued Speech can be seen as a manual supplement to [[lipreading]]. A small number of hand shapes (representing [[consonant]]s) and locations near the mouth (representing [[vowel]]s) differentiate between sounds not distinguishable from on the lips; in [[Tone (linguistics)|tonal languages]], the inclination and movement of the hand follows the tone. When viewed together with lip patterns, the gestures render all phonemes of the oral language intelligible visually.

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| colspan="2" | [[Afrikaans]] || [[Signed Afrikaans]] (signs of SASL)

|-

| colspan="2" | [[Amharic language|Amharic]] || [[Signed Amharic]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.academia.edu/1230482|title=Complexities of Ethiopian Sign Language Contact Phenomena & Implications for AAU|access-date=2014-01-10|archive-date=2023-10-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231008081443/https://www.academia.edu/1230482|url-status=dead}}</ref>

|-

| colspan="2" | [[Arabic language|Arabic]] || [[Signed Arabic]]{{citation needed|date=January 2014}}

|-

| colspan="2" | [[Mandarin Chinese]] || [[Wenfa Shouyu]] {{Lang|zh|文法手語}} ('Grammatical Sign Language', Signed Mandarin (Taiwan))<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.csie.ndhu.edu.tw/webv3/cht/speech/20091030%282%29.pdf |title=Archived copy台灣手語簡介 |access-date=2014-01-10 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140110090803/http://www.csie.ndhu.edu.tw/webv3/cht/speech/20091030%282%29.pdf |archive-date=2014-01-10 }}</ref>{{dubious|reason=source refers to 文法手語 term as encompassing all MCLs|date=September 2021}}

|-

| colspan="2" | [[Danish language|Danish]] || [[Signed Danish]]<ref>{{e17|dsl|Danish Sign Language}}</ref>

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| [[South African English]] || [[South African Signed English]] (using SASL signs)

|-

| colspan="2" | [[Esperanto]] || [[Esperanto manual alphabet|Signuno]] (proposed)

|-

| colspan="2" | [[Finnish language|Finnish]] || [[Signed Finnish]]<ref>{{e17|fse|Finnish Sign Language}}</ref>

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|-

| colspan="2" | [[German language|German]] || [[Signed German]] -– {{Lang|de|Lautsprachbegleitende Gebärden}} (LBG, 'signs accompanying speech') and {{Lang|de|Lautsprachunterstützende Gebärden}} (LUG, 'signs supporting speech')<ref>[[:de:Lautsprachbegleitende Gebärden#Lautsprachunterst.C3.BCtzende Geb.C3.A4rden|article on German Wikipedia about LBG and LUG]]</ref>

|-

| colspan="2" | [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] || [[Signed Hebrew]] (oral Hebrew accompanied by sign)<ref>Meir & Sandler, 2013, ''A Language in Space: The Story of Israeli Sign Language''</ref>

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| colspan="2" | [[Spanish language|Spanish]] || [[Signed Spanish]] (Mexico, Spain, and presumably elsewhere; also Signed Catalan)

|-

| colspan="2" | [[Swedish language|Swedish]] || [[Tecknad svenska]], ('Signed Swedish'), developed in the 1970s but now largely out of use

|-

| colspan="2" | [[toki pona|Toki Pona]] || ''toki pona luka'', ('toki pona by hand'), published in ''[[Toki Pona: The Language of Good]]''

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| colspan="2" | [[Urdu]] || [[Signed Urdu]] (Pakistan)<ref>"Indo-Pakistani Sign Language", ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics''</ref>

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* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120211124413/http://www.cuedspeech.org/sub/cued/language.asp Cued Languages] – list of languages and dialects to which Cued Speech has been adapted.

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20051219042249/http://library.gallaudet.edu/dr/faq-world-sl-name.html Sign Languages and Codes of the World by Region] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20051219042249/http://library.gallaudet.edu/dr/faq-world-sl-name.html by Name] – Gallaudet University library online

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20041128111548/http://www.rehabcouncil.nic.in/programmes/short_term.htm?PHPSESSID=f0217d54e375f0e7fabb50e191dc6977 Rehab Council of India]{{dead link|date=January 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}

* Kluwin, T. (1981). The grammaticality of manual representation of English in classroom settings. American Annals of the Deaf, 126, 417-421417–421.

* Marmor, G. & Pettito, L. (1979). Simultaneous communication in the classroom: How well is English grammar represented? Sign Language Studies, 23, 99-13699–136.

* Woodward, J. & Allen, T. (1988). Classroom use of artificial sign systems by teachers. Sign Language Studies, 61, 405-418405–418.

{{Refend}}

==External links==

* [http://www.dailycues.com/ Cued Speech: General Information, Resources, Events, and Classes] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200811215347/https://dailycues.com/ |date=2020-08-11 }}

{{sign language navigation}}