How To Write a Sign Language, Part 7: Why Not? The Reasons Why None Have Flourished

 

How To Write a Sign Language
Part 7: Why Not?
The Reasons Why None Have Flourished

Previous Part ⸙ Next Part

 Whether you are new to sign languages or a native signer who has signed your entire life - you probably haven't heard about sign language writing systems. Spoken languages around the world have writing systems so surely sign languages can too? Well, many have been tried and used in brief corners of the world but none have been widely adopted by Deaf communities.

 I recommend these resources if you want to learn more about all of those attempts and their histories:
 But in this mini-series of posts I want to explain the different types there are so that you, intrepid future sign language writer, may better understand the options and pick which to learn or make.

 In the last part I talked about the uses real life instances of sign language writing being used. In this final part I will talk about my own experiences and recommendations. 

Part 6: SL Writing IRL (Reddit Post & Comments Section)
Part 7: Why Not? The Reasons Why None have Flourished <= You are here

This series is a review (not a reporting of current events) - and thus all extracts and images are presented under fair dealing - with attribution given wherever possible. If you wish to get in contact to request an amendment - please do so at waterlanguages@outlook.com

Written by jan Olipija - 2025

After a hiatus I want to come back to finish this series with two more entries. Firstly I want to reflect on why no sign language writing systems have ever taken off and flourished. Why, after 200 years of attempts, and around 66 of rapid development in the field, hasn't Deaf community hasn't picked up on any of them to use widely?

The Achievements and Failures

 As much as I go on about the potential of sign language writing - I think it is important that we also reflect on the successes and failures thus far.

 Sign language writing has thus far failed to gain widescale acceptance, support and use that many early adopters might have hoped. As far as I can tell, Mimographie pretty much went nowhere after the initial publication of the book by Bébian, failing to gain purchase within the early Deaf schools. Stokoe Notation was envisioned as expanding over time and becoming the standard for analysis and dictionaries for sign language - and for a time it was, but it was dropped in favour of using images, sketches and videos. Sutton SignWriting was likewise successful for a time and in places from the 1980s-2000s, but has largely become a niche project in most places bar Brazil. And I covered the boom and bust of Si5S and its sister systems in the previous post.

 But I think the achievements of sign language writing should not be ignored either. Mimographie was part of a radical new wave of Deaf education and thought development, a dead end but one that contributed to the early concepts of manualism which later became foundational to the Deaf community. Stokoe and his notation system was instrumental in getting ASL and other sign languages recognised as languages in their own right by the linguistics community, and in fact by the Deaf community itself, rather than simply as "broken" language - and has given at least one pair of Deaf parents a way to express their culture in their child's name. SignWriting has allowed at least one person to publish a full dissertation and gain academic credibility from it, has books written in it, and is used in educational settings across Brazil. And Si5S and SLwrite caught the Deaf imagination, albeit for a brief window, in what seemed like a joyful collective cultural moment. These achievements are niche, but real and should be remembered.

 So with that in mind let's look at the main reasons why it hasn't flourished. What the barriers are, and some suggestions about how they might be overcome.

The 7 Hurdles

I want to present each of these as the strongest case possible, with a Steelman (strongest case) and then Counterpoint towards the end.

1: Language Tampering and Trauma - Hello Mr Elephant!

 DHH people and the Deaf community have a lot of trauma around our languages. Deaf people have gone through a long history of language deprivation, by the means of others restricting access to language (especially sign languages) as supposedly teaching only speech is "for their own good".

 But even when given access to sign languages, often hearing people tinker with those too. They make systems like Signed Exact English which tries to force sign language to follow English word order, and the Rochester method which forces users to spell everything out. These are often inefficient and cumbersome - and many Deaf people who are taught these and later learn sign languages feel that when they were limited to using them they were restricted. This causes a form of trauma I have seen almost nowhere else outside of the Deaf world, both individual trauma of those individuals and a form of collective trauma.

To demonstrate the inefficiency I suggest the following videos:


Notice how short the ASL version is, versus how much longer the SEE takes to sign out.


 While obviously primarily a gag - imagine genuinely trying to use this as your entire mode of communication.

Menagerie: The Worst Communication Methods You've Never Heard Of: An Intro to Signed Systems in the US

 My apologies that this is presented in English - but it is one of the best examples I could find of this information collected and criticisms made all at once. Plus it has good subtitles.

 And this is just in America. Similar examples exist across the world. In Britain, for example, there was Paget Gorman Sign System and is still Makaton (which Alison Brian did a great breakdown and criticism of).

 Professor Erin Moriarty terms this "Linguistic Technoscience" - an ideological project that justifies tinkering with a deaf child's input/output to render the child linguistically normal. Sorry about the horrendous format but here is Erin talking about this very topic:

Skip to 7:18

 She mentions how the linguistic technoscience is often justified on the basis of ideas that Deaf people are linguistically inferior or inadequate as they currently are. This is linguistic ableism and is untrue. I think perhaps the "tinkering" mentioned by Moriarty doesn't even go far enough - it's almost more "tampering". Interfering in such a way that sets deaf and hard of hearing children up to fail.

Is SL Writing Language Tampering?

Steelman: At the very end of the above video Erin mentions sign language writing systems when asked about it in the QnA. She says (English from the interpreter and transcript, she originally signed it in ASL):
There's been many projects um like that. I don't really have an opinion.
Um, my only concern about any system is that it gets forced on Deaf children or Deaf people in general or when a deaf person is told, you know, "your language is inferior because there's no writing system attached to it". And so the thing is is that ASL does have a writing form, it's called English. I mean, Deaf people are bilingual. 
Uh, now wait, let me Let me preface this that there are examples of language deprivation certainly, but also I think everybody all of us have bits of different languages within us. How many people know a few words in Spanish or French because it's part of our everyday language use? We all do this. We all have these bits of other languages within us and that's part of our life journey, right?
Thank you for the question.

 This shows us that a writing system definitely can be a form of language tampering.

 If you make a system with the mindset of "your language is inferior because there's no writing system attached to it" then that is language tampering. If you push such a system onto Deaf children and the Deaf community in general that too would be tampering. It would be an ideological project that justifies tinkering with a deaf child's input/output to render the child linguistically normal.

 Counterpoint: To avoid tampering, the motivations and spread must be organic. Any such project must be Deaf lead without the saviour mindset. To use an example, I don't believe that Si5S was language tampering. It was:

  • Created by a Deaf signer.
  • Spread amongst the Deaf community due to genuine interest.
  • Even the offshoot systems like ASLwrite were made by Deaf people and spread organically.
  • The aim seemed to be to create a use and literature amongst Deaf adults / the Deaf community alongside using it with children.
Whether other systems are too needs to be a case by case basis.

2: Bilingualism - Why not Just Use English?

When I say "English" in this section I mean in the anglosphere. You can swap it for the dominant language of your country if you'd like.

 Again, as Dr Moriarty noted, Deaf people are often bilingual. That when they want to write - they will just use English. And why shouldn't they? It's a bigger language that most people understand. Anything they write is likely to gain a much larger audience in English than it ever is in any form of written sign. 

 Plus, if they have been taught how to read/write English at a young age, then English is just as much one of their languages as sign is. The recommended way of educating Deaf children is the Bilingual Bicultural (BIBI method), and many don't even get that - spending years without sign just learning spoken language and it's written counterpart. There are of course those who are not confident in English, but even they spend much of their childhood practicing English and surrounded by English.

 In terms of resisting language death, sign language has a leg up on spoken languages - because signing is inherently easier for DHH people who have learnt it to use, but it is still a problem that sign languages face. Convincing parents to teach their DHH children sign when the whole world speaks can be difficult. Oral and late deafened DHH people can sometimes struggle a lot, and not view it as worth it. But all of that still hasn't caused sign languages to die because at the end of the day, it's so much easier to understand and use sign as a DHH person once you find community and learn it. That same ease of access is not there for writing - as all writing is ultimately the same, ink on a page, black on white.

 Steelman: So if many more people use English, Deaf people are raised bilingual from a young age, and there is no real "advantage" to writing sign over writing English... why not just use English? Seems like a no-brainer!

 Counterpoint: This same phenomenon occurs outside of sign language too. I see it in Welsh, in myself, struggling to read and write in Welsh so defaulting to English because it is what I have practiced more. It's also a known barrier for endangered languages, where speakers default to the dominant language (Writing Our Language (Chapter 14) - Revitalizing Endangered Languages).

 I think these are perfectly valid reasons to use written English (or any dominant spoken language), but I do want to respond to them also. We can have both things - other languages around the world have both their own writing and remain bilingual. Reading and writing skills are transferrable between writing systems, and for any enthusiastic sign writers - it could offer a form of self expression that English writing does not.

3: Visual Language - A Wardrobe Full of Clothes, But Nothing Fits!
All images in this sections are from previous blog entries.

 Sign languages are visual languages, or more precisely visio-spatial & expressive languages. Many signs are iconic, meaning they resemble what they mean (way more than words in spoken languages which sound like what they mean). Signs can be moved in space to add meaning, such as moving in a specific direction. And the use of facial expressions and body movements (NMF/NMM/NMS) are important both grammatically and expressively.



 Most sign languages use classifiers, these are uses of the hands which "show" rather than "tell" what is happening:

Taking this to the extreme, Deaf poetry turns up the iconicity, spatialness and use of classifiers. This can be seen most keenly in Visual Vernacular:

 As I have tried to stress numerous times, this is a very important part of Deaf culture. Deaf people feel this is a key aspect of sign languages, and a common criticism of sign language writing systems is that they fail to be visual.

 Steelman: how could a written language ever capture such dynamic range of visual information? Any writing system is going to reduce it down and in the process lose some or all of it. Is it worth it?

 Counterpoint: A number of systems attempt to address this problem, with varying levels of success.

 Parameter alphabets do the worst in this regard. They pull a sign apart bit by bit and stitch it back together again. To derive what a sign looks like, one must follow each letter like a set of instructions constructing it ones' self:


 Parameter alphabets are technically "complete", as there is enough in a written word in order to understand what is being signed once you learn the system and how to decode it. But they do not preserve the iconicity of signs at all - you cannot tell from a glance what a sign means based on how it looks. Spatial features may also technically be present, but are often obscured behind a system that needs decoding. Similarly expression are lost or are buried behind this encoding - you can't just glance at a face to know what the expression is.

 Different Parameter Alphabets fit better and worse. Of the Parameter alphabets I believe Signfont does the best at preserving these things, but not by a large margin. I will talk about it more next entry.

  Projectional Systems are a clear improvement.



 The use of hands in 2D space make it very clear that what you are looking at are signs. Most of the time, you can even begin to mimic the signs with only minimal understanding of the system, and spotting iconic and spatial signs is far easier. Additionally, the presence of faces allows for a reader to glance at the depicted expression in order to glean the non-manual element of the sign.

 But writing them is far harder. You need specialised input methods and to often need to draw quite complex arrangements of symbols. Also - standardisation is difficult and a single sign can be made half a dozen ways depending on how the user, which could be a strength or a weakness depending on your viewpoint.

 Additionally the flattening of 3D into 2D causes signs to appear like pressed flowers; a shadow of their former beauty. Signs that would flow dynamically in three dimensions must now compromise to fit in their new medium - and sometimes the iconicity shown by how a sign moves through 3D space is hard to re-capture. But the use of an extra dimension compared to linear systems (just travelling in one direction) means they can represent signs far closer to how they look when signed. Again it is not impossible, but is an extra skill to acquire.

 Finally Logographies have a clear leg up:
 The nature of logograms / pictograms as little pictures that represent the meanings of signs gives them a clear advantage in the iconicity department. This allows for a direct link between what a sign represents and what the written word looks like. Spatial marking is a little harder, as you need to find a way to represent space (something invisible) in black and white. It's doable, but takes a bit more abstraction. And again the transition from 3D to 2D means that spatial representation is difficult. Finally, the ability to write faces as logograms means that expressions are easy like projectional systems.

 The problem with Logographies, of course, is that there is a lot to learn. Often in the order of hundreds or thousands of individual characters.

 Any choice of writing system would be a trade off and depends on what you want to do with the system. I do not fault any signer from looking at the options and feeling nothing quite fits, because it doesn't. There is a little bit of sign that must be given up in order to accommodate being written down.

But in terms of which fit the visual nature of sign language, in my view they are ranked:
  1. Logographies - these capture the most of the visual-ness of sign languages, but compromises with having the most numbers of glyphs.
  2. Projectional Systems - via the use of 2D plus faces, these capture a significant amount of the visualness of sign languages, but the compromise is that they are harder to write.
  3. Parameter Alphabets - these capture the least aspects of sign language visual-ness, but are by contrast the easiest to write.

4: Filming - I'll send you a Video Message!

 The rise of mobiles and the ability to film anything anywhere has changed a LOT about society. But for Deaf people it has opened up a whole new avenue of communication. Gone are the days of bulky Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD - aka teletypewriter, textphone & minicom). 

 Now you can just whip out your phone and send a video message or use a video interpreter. We even have sign language emergency service calling now!



 Video content can also be shared online via Youtube, cheaply and easily!



 And with a little extra video editing signing content creators can get their ideas out in video form:




 Steelman: So, if all of this is available, why use sign language writing at all? Why not just record one's self? Other signers will understand it far more, and far more easily, than a whole new writing system they have to learn from scratch!

 Counterpoint: Well it need not be an either or. Both options can be available! The age of video making sign language content more available to more people is great! Yes, more of that please. But for spoken languages we have videos, audio-books, podcasts and we also have books and subtitles and everything else. The more options, the better!

    5: Compatibility - How Do I Even Use it?

     I have already talked at length about the attempts to make sign languages writing systems compatible with both hand and digital writing - so I will keep this section brief.

     Steelman: the more custom programmes, fonts or pieces of technology you need to write the system the harder it will be to adopt. The more barriers you put in the path of a learner. Why should anyone have to go through all this troubl?

     Counterpoint: Conversely, everything has a learning curve. Every new technology must be learnt.

      6: Momentum - The Rock & The Hill

       This is somewhat the culmination of other points above. A rock stood placed firmly in the ground on the top of a hill stays there. A rock rolling down a hill is very difficult to stop or change its course.

       Sign language writing is a rock at the top of the hill. Planted firmly in the ground, unmoving. There have been some attempts to shove it and some wobbles, but very little movement as of yet.

       English, on the other hand, has momentum - as do videos. Written languages for spoken languages have 5000 years of momentum, adapting language by language to get to where we are today as technology, culture and language itself have evolved with them. Film and video as a medium has existed for around 150 years - being honed and popularised for a variety of uses, of which sign language is only a very very minor part.

       Steelman: In the face of this, why would anyone choose sign language writing? SL writing is dead in the water. If I want to express myself, doing so in SL writing ensures that no-one else will understand it.

       Counterpoint: But if we can get that rock rolling, if we could start to popularise the use of sign language writing, the momentum could build up fast. We could solve the compatibility issues, as tech companies integrate solutions into their hardware and software. We could find the best fit for sign language through using it and seeing what works in reality rather than just in theory. It could become such that the default is to write in sign then translate to English. And language tampering could be avoided by the community adopting it as their own.

       And once that rock is rolling - it need not be a perfect system. People will learn and use an imperfect system with momentum, over a perfect one with none. Because, after all, any communication method needs others to communicate with.

       We see the most momentum behind any system in Sutton Signwriting in Brazil and South America, where the boulder is rolling, albeit quite slowly still. It seems like Brazil is the most active and productive place for sign language writing and this momentum could be what brings it to the wider global community.

       None of this happens without a push. If you are interested in sign language writing, especially if you are a Deaf person or fluent signer then you must lend a bit of elbow grease if you want this to come true.

      7: Opposition - You Can take a Horse to Water, but You Can't Make it Drink.

      Finally I think there is an opposition to sign language writing from the Deaf community. This can be seen in a number of responses to my previous posts. They usually respond with a mixture of the above reasons I have laid out.

       Steelman: Ultimately if it is not something the community wants, it will never happen. This series exists to document and offer the options available so that that decision can be made wholly informed.

       Counterpoint: I want to look at a wider historical perspective:

      Who Made the First Writing and How did People First React?

       But in some ways none of this is new. Long ago no languages were written languages. And when they first began to spread, even hearing people felt much the same way that some Deaf people do today when faced with writing.

       The very earliest origins of writing are shrouded in mystery. Sometimes called "protowriting" it seems like humans used symbols for... well something, but the very earliest markings are still not well understood.
      Tărtăria tablets - Wikipedia

       It took a while for this to evolved into something we recognise as writing and it was traders and administrators - used for keeping stock of what they had and who to give it to - as well as also by craftsmen to stamp their wares with proof of who made it.

       The following are proto-Cuneiform tablets denote amounts and distribution of grains and beer. You might be able to spot the symbols which mean "jar"!

      The following is a token which means "ten sheep".
       It was also adopted by priests, aristocracy, diviners and legal experts for spiritual purposes as well as recording religion, the great deeds of rulers, record geologies, write contracts and record laws.

       A cuneiform tablet record the contract to sell a field:
      Cuneiform - Wikipedia

      Egyptian hieroglyphs - Wikipedia
      Oracle bone script - Wikipedia

      Writing remained in use amongst the elites of society for most of history. Wales was one of the first countries in Europe to pursue mass literacy.

       Motivated by a desire to save people's souls, in 1734 Griffith Jones set about organising a system to teach children and adults basic reading skills in their mother tongue in as short a time as possible, usually around three months, before moving on to the next location.

       With the catechism and the Bible as their only texts and funded by wealthy patrons, these travelling schools reached almost every part of Wales. The language taught was usually Welsh, although English was used in areas such as south Pembrokeshire.

       It is estimated that almost half the population had attended the devout minister's schools by the time of his death in 1771. By the second half of the 18th century Wales was one of the few European countries to have a literate majority. So successful was the project that it attracted the attention of Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, who in 1764 commissioned a report on Griffith Jones' schools.

      BBC Wales - History - Themes - Welsh language: Literacy in 17th century Wales 

       How people reacted to this is somewhat unclear, as we have very little accounts from them as they could not write (which is also the very same reason we have very few accounts from Deaf history). But there are some interesting clues.

       The Greeks didn't invent writing - but were "early adopters" and many of their writings from long ago are preserved. Socrates spoke ill of writing, suggesting (by way of a fable) that it promotes forgetfulness.
       The story goes that Thamus said much to Theuth, both for and against each art, which it would take too long to repeat. But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, replied: “O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”

      You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father’s support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support. 

      Socrates on the Forgetfulness that Comes with Writing - New Learning Online

       There are also some examples of indiginous communities objecting to the expansion of writing to their languages.

      the Papago have a "fear that written texts will automatically be scattered out among the whites and other tribes".

      [...]

      five factors in particular give rise to a general resistance on the part of community members to the use of writing in heritage language programs: 1) a conception of writing as removing the spirit of spoken language; 2) writing as undermining traditional sociocultural norms of information acquisition; 3) writing as allowing for the appropriation of the heritage language by outsiders; 4) writing as a process that inhibits language learning; and 5) writing as a logistical problem (e.g., funding, staffing).

      "Language Ideologies and Orthographies: Developing a Writing System for" by Evan Ashworth 

       Sometimes, however, reactions to languages being written for the first time can recieve positive reactions:

      In a collaborative effort between Khwe speakers and linguists, an alphabet and other writing conventions were developed for their oral language. When writing his first Khwe words, David Soza Naudé, one of the workshop participants, who later became the key person in running community literacy workshops, stated with surprise and astonishment, ‘So we actually speak a real language’.

      This, of course relies on the idea that "real languages" use writing - and thus known of examples of writing in the world.

       I think the key takeaway here are twofold:
      1. Objections to writing have a long history and aren't isolated to just the Deaf community. Those objections should be listened to and respected. But they are not immutable, as opinions can change over time and with the right events.
      2. Writing systems first finds use in a niche of practical use, before expanding out. This attracts those who want or need to use the system and then can snowball into more and more use over time.

      Reflections & The Path Forward

      I think it is very easy to get swept up in a "linguistic technoscience" mindset. To begin language tampering with the right intentions in your heart and find yourself on the wrong side. I think, in my eagerness, I too have accidentally done this at points throughout this series - especially when defending my work.

      Ultimately it is no one person's decision to make. But if sign language writing is to be adopted, I hope it is done so ethically and via the choice of the Deaf community. I hope it avoids language tampering, fits sign language snugly, becomes a decent parallel alternative to (not replacement for) both English and video and is Deaf lead with strong Deaf community participation.

      Or maybe the 7 hurdles are too great to leap and sign languages are destined to forever be writingless.

      The next instalment in this series will be my last, where I go over my experiences and recommendations of sign language writing systems!

      Previous Part ⸙ Next Part