Yay: more fingerpelling practice!

One of the biggest challenges in learning Auslan is mastering the reading back of fingerspelling. It's something that every learner struggles with: the feelings of embarrassment from asking someone to fingerspell the same word 3 or 4 times; the feeling of panic when you start missing words during a situation which doesn't permit requests for a slower respell, not to mention the defeat you feel when you encounter a signer whose fingerspelling is just so fast that you swear you can feel your hair blowing back from your face, as if their fingers are an electric fan. Yes, learning fingerspelling can be demoralising sometimes. But there are also undeniable moments of joy, like when you do catch someone's name the first time, moments of pride when you understand a word someone else has missed, and the sheer triumph of recognising a really long word - feels to me like the Auslan equivalent of using all your letters in one go in Scrabble!

Alas, there seem to be no shortcuts to success in reading back fingerspelling. The advice on how to improve is simple: the more practice, the better, and the more varied the practice the better. That is, it's helpful to watch fingerspelling from older signers, younger singers, men, women, native signers and non-native signers, because in the real world people have different fingerspelling styles and accents.

Yet, it's difficult to find opportunities to intensively practice reading back fingerspelling. There are relatively few study materials such as CDs available for fingerspelling practice and once you know which words are on the CD it becomes obsolete. A solution to this problem using YouTube has recently occurred to my class. The idea is that signers could upload short fingerspelled lists of 20 words, creating a collection of excellent learning resources quickly and easily, available free to all. There would be a broad range of styles and accents represented. Native and fluent fingerspellers could provide expert fingerspelling modelling for learners to watch and learners could upload their videos for feedback from others. Limiting each video to 20 words would ensure that all videos are brief enough to be uploaded quickly by the makers and download quickly by the viewers.

Below are my first four efforts, available on YouTube. I chose to give each set of 20 words a theme. This gives viewers at least some contextual help in identifying the words, which is, afterall, what happens in the real world.

I've tried following these handy tips for ensuring good quality video:

• decent lighting
• including in the frame both my face and hands, so that any mouth patterns are captured (although I tried not to mouth words too overtly)
• wearing clothing that contrasts with my skin colour so my hands don't blend into my shirt
• I tried to remember to mute the video (personal choice, as a viewer could also choose to hit the mute button, however this way the no-one has to know that while I was recording this video my bloke was watching the footy, the fridge was changing gears and the cat was scratching more holes in the carpet!)
  

Now we just need to find some ways to make this catch on around the country so a good collection of videos becomes available.

Fingerspelling practice set 1: African countries


Fingerspelling practice 2: Australian towns and cities


Fingerspelling practice 3: American states


Fingerspelling practice 4: Australian birds

Nailed it: Robert Adam's Senate Submission

On a rainy Sunday afternoon I decided to go to the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) to finish looking at some of the fine Australian modern paintings I didn't quite get my fill of when I went for a fabulous sign interpreted tour a couple of weeks ago. The problem with that is that the NGA is near the National Library of Australia and I thought I would just pop in for five minutes to run "Auslan" through the search engine. Y'know - just for kicks! One hour later and I'm still here but I'm real happy because I've struck gold! I've come across the submissions to the senate inquiry into hearing health in Australia. The terms of reference for the inquiry are:
Hearing health in Australia, with particular reference to:

• the extent, causes and costs of hearing impairment in Australia;
• the implications of hearing impairment for individuals and the community;
• the adequacy of access to hearing services, including assessment and support services, and hearing technologies;
• the adequacy of current hearing health and research programs, including education and awareness programs; and
• specific issues affecting Indigenous communities.

The first thing I noticed was the use of the word "health" in the inquiry title and throughout the ToR, making the medical model of hearing the default conceptual frame for the whole exercise. Second thing was the diversity of organisations and individuals who made submissions - 187 of them! After clicking on a couple of submissions at random by an economist and a speech pathologist, I recognised a familiar name: Robert Adam. I and many other Auslan learners may know him as one of the guys on the Victorian video tapes who fingerspells way too fast for me to understand! (Note to self: must practice reading back more!) But to the rest of the world he is one of the Australian Deaf community's foremost members, and a prominent advocate for Deaf equality. Currently he is doing a PhD on contact between BSL and Irish Sign Language at the Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre at University College, London. (A topic for another blog post, perhaps.)

In Robert Adam's six-page submission to the senate inquiry he addresses some of the most prevalent myths about language acquisition by Deaf children, backing up his statements with strong evidence from peer-reviewed and published science from around the world. He also clearly shows that Australia is in breach of its international obligations on human rights regarding its lack of provision of services for Deaf people. It's impressive writing and I encourage people to read the whole six pages, but if you haven't got time, these are Robert Adam's recommendations:

"• That the Australian Government meets its obligations under the National Policy on Languages, the Disability Discrimination Act and the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by ensuring that every child born with a hearing loss have access to a sign
language.
• That the Australian Government implement a national strategy to ensure that all children with a hearing loss have access to Auslan as a first language on diagnosis.
• That parents of children diagnosed with a hearing loss have access to Auslan classes, and are able to meet with Deaf role models.
• That hearing parents of children with a hearing loss have access to support and Deaf role models in well-structured early intervention programmes.
• That all cochlear implantation programmes be required to incorporate Auslan classes for implantees and their families.
• That the education of Deaf children include such subjects as Deaf studies (including study of Deaf history, folklore, and Deaf culture)."

I couldn't agree more and I'm so pleased that the argument he has made has been delivered so succinctly and powerfully. Thank you, Mr Adam, you've made my week!

Now, off to the NGA for one more hour of inspiration!

Fingerspelling: a definition

This semester we are doing a module concentrating on fingerspelling and numbers in Auslan. We started off by critiquing four existing definitions of fingerspelling from the literature. Some were pretty complicated and some used airy-fairy terms such as “writing in the air”. Then our teacher asked us to come up with our own definition. As per usual, I came up with an even more incomprehensible alternative, cramming way too many concepts into the definition using words that were way too cumbersome. After reflection, I realise that it’s actually pretty simple. The core concepts are:

• the two languages (one signed, one written)
• the signs and letters within those languages that make up alphabets

I came up with two more potential definitions of fingerspelling:

The use of signs in a sign language or manual code that represent letters in a spoken and written language, enabling the spelling of words from the spoken and written language using only one’s hands.

Use of the signs in a signed language or code that represent the letters in the alphabet of a written language to transliterate units of meaning from a written language into a signed language.

Neither are as elegant as they could be, but the concepts included (and those excluded) work for me because: the definition is generalisable worldwide they include both signed languages and signed codes (e.g. signed English) which both use fingerspelling. they include the element of transfer between languages or a language to a code. Thinking about this prompted me to look up fingerspelling in some nearby dictionaries. At work, we have access to the Australian Macquarie Dictionary It defines “fingerspell” like this:

A form of sign language in which the letters of the word are signed individually to spell it out.

I think this definition has at least these problems:

1. It implies that fingerspelling is a sign language of its own. As fingerspelling only consists of a meagre 26 (in Anglophone contexts) signs, this really cannot be true. It would be more accurate to say that fingerspelling is a part of sign language, not a form.
2. Restricting fingerspelling to use within a sign language also means that signed codes such as signed English are given the status of language. Because they are not productive in the sense that natural languages are productive, signed codes cannot be called languages. Yet, signed English does use fingerspelling, so I think manual codes and sign languages both need to be specified within the definition.
3. This definition does not mention the source language from which the concepts of letters and words come. In fact it seems to assume that sign languages inherently have letters and words. Not being a written language, Auslan would have no need for letters if it existed on its own. It is only through Auslan’s close contact with English that Auslan has adopted the concepts of letters, necessitating a way to represent them with ones’ hands (i.e. fingerspelling). The concept of “word” is also borrowed from English, as the equivalent in sign language is “sign”. Therefore reference to both the source language of the written/spoken letters and the target language of the equivalent signed letters is required within the definition.

I think Wikipedia is pretty close to the perfect definition:

Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands.

Elegant and complete! Thank you lay lexicographers of the interwebs!
Think I might write to the Macquarie people...