My son has auditory neuropathy. This means that he hears, but imperfectly. We have been learning Signed Exact English. Or rather, trying to learn it from books. Static images with a verbal description just don't quite capture the richness of a gesture. Since SEE uses many gestures taken from ASL this will be a really great resource for us. Thank-you for the link. It is very much appreciated!!
Posted by Bernie at April 30, 2004 05:22 PMYou're very welcome; it's nice to feel this site is of some actual use in the world!
Posted by language hat at April 30, 2004 06:47 PMI'll just add that the site is very good for formal citation forms that show some etymology. Most of the time, though, fluent signers abbreviate these signs quite a bit. (this is quite apart from any kind of inflection that signs may undergo).
In everyday ASL, for example, male and female signs for example systematically feature progressive handshape assimilation. So that WOMAN and MAN aren't GIRL+FINE, BOY+FINE respectively, but a single movement from chin, forehead to chest (same handshape as FINE, namely the 5 hand).
Other signs may look entirely different in their short forms (this was a big problem for me when I was learning Polish sign language).
Learning lots of individual signs is interesting, and of course important if you want to learn a sign language, but to you can memorize entire dictionaries of citation forms and not understand anything that signing people do.
Posted by Michael Farris at May 1, 2004 04:14 PM