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OT (con)sign languages and secret messages

From:Sam Drost <sdrost@...>
Date:Friday, December 12, 2003, 17:34
I remember recently seeing a post about how sign languages were hard to
transcribe onto paper (or digital) since it is hard to transcribe the
motion.  Recently I came across the site signwriting.org.  Has anyone looked
at this and considered using it (or at least the symbols) as a basis for
con-sign languages?  I only took a very brief look at the site and, since I
don't know sign language at all (except maybe "the finger"), I probably
wouldn't know if the site did a decent job of transcribing the motion used
in sign language anyway.

This would probably go better in conculture, but I've already started the
subject here so I thought I'd finish my thoughts on sign languages for the
day.

Another thing, my brother, who loves the dune books, recently received the
"Children of Dune" (I think it's a mini-series made by Sci-fi channel, but
not sure) movie for his birthday.  I watched the first episode or part or
whatever it is and on thing they did that I found interesting was that they
had a sign language that was used to pass secret messages between one
members of one of the warring factions.  What they'd do is place their hands
in their laps and sign the "real" conversation (which was subtitled in.
threw me off a little because I could see the subtitles and heard the
conversation and, for a second, was trying to figure out why it didn't
match) while holding a completely different conversation verbally.  This,
while interesting and a cool idea for some courtly conculture (esp. one with
lots of intrigue and machiavellian politics), seems like it would take a
_lot_ of practice to perfect.
---
Sam Drost

Red meat is not bad for you. Blue-green fuzzy meat is bad for you.

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Roger Mills <romilly@...>