ASLwrite (
ASL
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is express ...
: ![ASLwrite](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/ASLwrite.png)
) is a
writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...
that developed from
si5s
si5s is a writing system for American Sign Language that resembles a handwritten form of SignWriting. It was devised in 2003 in New York City by Robert Arnold, with an unnamed collaborator. In July 2010 at the Deaf Nation World Expo in Las Vega ...
. It was created to be an
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
, continuously developing
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
for
American Sign Language (ASL), trying to capture the nuances of
ASL's features. ASLwrite is currently used by no more than a handful of people, primarily revolving around discussions happening on Facebook and, previously, Google Groups. However, it is currently spreading, with comic strips, posters and more becoming available.
Its core components are digits, locatives, marks and movements which are written in a fairly rigid order (though in a fairly flexible configuration) from left to right. Its digits are representations of handshapes – or the configuration of the hand and fingers – where the locatives represent locations on the body (or, in theory, in space), the marks represent anything from location (e.g., edge mark) to small movements (e.g., flutter) to facial expressions (e.g., raised eyebrow mark
![Raised eyebrow marks](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Raised_eyebrow_marks.png)
) and the movements indicate the movement of the hands in space by modifying the digits (and for shoulder shift
![Shoulder shift](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Shoulder_shift.png)
/head nod modifying the body).
The order of the writing is from left to right, top to bottom, with locatives or certain marks often beginning words. Sentences are ended by the full stop mark (
![Rotational Diacritic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Rotational_Diacritic.png)
). Questions in written ASL are denoted by eyebrow marks bounding the question not unlike
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
's "
¿ ?."
Question words or wh-questions in ASL can also form the
interrogative
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
.
There are in total 105 characters in ASLwrite with 67 digits, five diacritic marks, twelve locatives, sixteen extramanual marks and five movement marks.
Since its creation, it has evolved to include more digits, locatives, movements and marks as well as modify those already present.
History
si5s
si5s is a writing system for American Sign Language that resembles a handwritten form of SignWriting. It was devised in 2003 in New York City by Robert Arnold, with an unnamed collaborator. In July 2010 at the Deaf Nation World Expo in Las Vega ...
, a system built from
SignWriting
Sutton SignWriting, or simply SignWriting, is a system of writing sign languages. It is highly featural and visually iconic, both in the shapes of the characters, which are abstract pictures of the hands, face, and body, and in their spatial arr ...
, was first proposed by Robert Arnold in his 2007
Gallaudet
Gallaudet University ( ) is a private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. for the education of the Hearing loss, deaf and hard of hearing. It was founded in 1864 as a gramma ...
thesis ''A Proposal of the Written System for ASL''. The ASLwrite community split from Arnold upon his decision to maintain si5s as a private venture with ASLized after the publication of his and Adrean Clark's book ''How to Write American Sign Language''. Today, ASLwrite's website notes:
Type of system
ASLwrite is a somacheirographic system meaning that it represents the body (
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
: σῶμα ''sôma'' 'body') and hands (
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
: χείρ ''kheír'' 'hand') and relays
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
information. However, it also incorporates logographs (questioning marks) and is
featural
In a featural writing system, the shapes of the symbols (such as letters) are not arbitrary but encode phonological features of the phonemes that they represent. The term featural was introduced by Geoffrey Sampson to describe the Korean alpha ...
.
Description
![ASLwrite Writing Guide](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/ASLwrite_Writing_Guide.png)
The general principle is to capture a single ASL word per segment, from left to right, registering non-manual feature(s), location(s), handshape(s), movement(s) and general orientation. It imagines the writer/speaker is looking down at their hands or viewing words from the profile such that words can be made either as if seen from straight-on or from one's profile.
The digibet captures handshape information as well as orientation, movement and some locations. Locatives are characters that capture location, though handshape diacritics like ''edge'' do capture some locations such as edge of palm. Diacritics, such as movements, modify handshapes and can indicate small movements or small orientations. Movements themselves are fairly flexible in their shapes and orientations, which makes digitising this script difficult.
From left to right, up to down, this is the order in which to write characters:
# Non-manual marks – Often, this is seen as raised or lowered eyebrows, but it can include body or mouth marks such as shoulder-shift and teeth-clench.
# Frontal or profile locatives – Captures the same location information, just from two perspectives. An example (seen on the right) is the shoulder locative is either a shoulder frontal locative that is written above or below the handshape(s).
# Handshapes – Can be written before or after the locative. A handshape can be oriented in 360° depending on its location and is written at the end of its movement path if there is one. Each handshape present is written, and when more than one handshape (of one hand) is written, a movement must be present.
## Diacritics/movements – Written as a part of the handshape, though larger movements or movements that affect multiple handshapes is written after (see below).
# Movements – Larger movements or movements that affect multiple handshapes. When a handshape changes without overt movement, the handshapes are written left-to-right with a single movement below, similar to an underline.
# Non-manual & punctuation marks – These are questioning marks such as ''why'', ''who'', ''how'' and ''how''. The stop mark is denoted by a "o" mark.
Digibet
The digibet is composed of handshapes called digits that are modified by diacritics and movements. It shares 23 handshapes with ASL's
manual alphabet
Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often been used in deaf e ...
. Digits are grouped together by features such as +thumb/-thumb or +closed/-closed. In practise, there are 67 digits in ASLwrite's digibet, though that number is growing as new digits are added representing diverse handshapes. Moreover, other languages may adopt this system which would add increasingly more digits.
Diacritics
There are five diacritics, of which one is a movement diacritic. They are: Hinge (
![Hinge Diacritic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Hinge_Diacritic.png)
,
![Hinge](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Hinge.png)
), Rotational (
![Rotational Diacritic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Rotational_Diacritic.png)
,
![Rotational](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Rotational.png)
), Rattle (
![Rattle Diacritic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Rattle_Diacritic.png)
,
![Rattle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Rattle.png)
), Flutter (
![Flutter Diacritic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Flutter_Diacritic.png)
,
![Flutter](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Flutter.png)
) and Edge.
Movement
Movements are flexible and thus hard to capture in a digital or non-handwritten fashion. The movements are diverse and aim to capture the movements of the hands, arms and body. There are three points – an endpoint, a firmpoint and a contactpoint –, an orbit mark, a steering and a crank mark as well as the movement mark or line. The movement line follows the path of the hand(s) and can be as clean (e.g., – or , ) or as erratic as possible. The points denote the end of a handshape's path and the degree to which the motion is made. A contact point denotes an imaginary or in-the-air point with the contactpoint ending at a location and noted as being a firm ending with the firmpoint. The orbit mark indicates a central "point" around which the handshapes orbit; for orbital paths cut short, one would use a steering mark, and for parallel cranking motions, the crank mark would be used.
Locatives
The locatives are characters that denote a specific location on or near the signer's body. They are presented from a face-on and side-view. The two sub-classifications are frontal and profile locatives.
Non-manual marks
Non-manual marks vary quite significantly and can only be placed at the beginning or end of words or phrases. Eyebrow marks are denoted before and after the word(s) in question thus bounding the words that are modified by eyebrow marks. They are called: Raised (
![Raised eyebrow marks](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Raised_eyebrow_marks.png)
), Knit, Wan, Slanted and Squint. Questioning marks exist in ASL as
logographs that denote ASL's
wh-questions
A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative ...
such as WHO or FOR-FOR. They are placed after a closed word's or phrase's second eyebrow mark and can exist as an entire sentence alone. Mouth marks are characters that relay what action the mouth is doing. It is placed inside the first eyebrow mark.
Body movements
Body movements are non-manual, non-facial features such as shoulder shift (
![Shoulder shift](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Shoulder_shift.png)
) or head nod. They, as well as nose crinkle (
15px), stand alone and can be inserted anywhere, inside and outside of eyebrow-marked phrases.
Writing samples
![Yes in ASLwrite](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Yes_in_ASLwrite.png)
means ''Yes?'' in ASL composed of
![Raised eyebrow marks](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Raised_eyebrow_marks.png)
,
![S handshape digit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/S_handshape_digit.png)
,
![Hinge Diacritic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Hinge_Diacritic.png)
and
![Rotational Diacritic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Rotational_Diacritic.png)
where the raised eyebrow marks at the beginning and the end indicate it is a
yes/no question, and the hinge mark (
![Hinge Diacritic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Hinge_Diacritic.png)
) denotes that the S handshape digit (
![S handshape digit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/S_handshape_digit.png)
) makes a nodding motion. The circular point at the end is a full stop mark indicating the end of the sentence. Unlike in English writing, the full stop mark (
![Rotational Diacritic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Rotational_Diacritic.png)
) is employed for all sentences, even questions (as seen here). Breaks in the sentence, as seen below, are denoted by the shoulder shift mark (
![Shoulder shift](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Shoulder_shift.png)
).
The text on the right is from Chapters 1:2-4 of the
Book of Ruth
The Book of Ruth ( he, מגילת רות, ''Megilath Ruth'', "the Scroll of Ruth", one of the Five Megillot) is included in the third division, or the Writings (Ketuvim), of the Hebrew Bible. In most Christian canons it is treated as one of the ...
. The first quoted text is the verse in English and the second is an
ASL gloss.
Encoding
Due to the complexity of the writing system and its need for flexibility for movements, it means producing anything on a digital format is difficult. However, there are efforts to create
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
s headed by members of its
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
group, notably looking at proper font creation and using current keyboard characters such as ' } ' or ' _. ' to achieve minor forms of communication in ASL over text. An example phrase is " }_.U- " which means 'thank you' in ASL.
See also
*
si5s
si5s is a writing system for American Sign Language that resembles a handwritten form of SignWriting. It was devised in 2003 in New York City by Robert Arnold, with an unnamed collaborator. In July 2010 at the Deaf Nation World Expo in Las Vega ...
*
Stokoe notation
Stokoe notation () is the first phonemic script used for sign languages. It was created by William Stokoe for American Sign Language (ASL), with Latin letters and numerals used for the shapes they have in fingerspelling, and iconic glyphs to trans ...
*
ASL-phabet
ASL-phabet, or the ASL Alphabet, is a writing system developed by Samuel Supalla for American Sign Language (ASL). It is based on a system called SignFont,
which Supalla modified and streamlined for use in an educational setting with Deaf childr ...
*
Hamburg Notation System
The Hamburg Sign Language Notation System, or HamNoSys, is a transcription system for all sign languages, not only for ASL, with a direct correspondence between symbols and gesture aspects, such as hand location, shape and movement. It was develope ...
(HamNoSys)
*
SignWriting
Sutton SignWriting, or simply SignWriting, is a system of writing sign languages. It is highly featural and visually iconic, both in the shapes of the characters, which are abstract pictures of the hands, face, and body, and in their spatial arr ...
Bibliography
* ASL Writing - Blog. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
.
* "Si5s Writing LLC , Facebook." Facebook. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
.
* "Sign Language & Interpreting - Mt. San Antonio College." Mt. San Antonio College. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
* Twitter. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. .
* Write in American Sign Language! Web. 13 Dec. 2011. .
* ASLwrite History/FAQ. Web. 17 Feb. 2014 .
References
External links
*
{{list of writing systems
American Sign Language
Sign language notation
Writing systems introduced in 2010