One interesting aspect of BSL grammar is multi-channel signs; these are special signs where both manual (i.e. using your hands) and non-manual (e.g. facial expressions, lip patterns etc) actions are combined to form a single sign. In my BSL course on Tuesday we covered over 80 different examples of multi-channel signs and also discussed how they fit into BSL sentence structure. In general, multi-channel signs seem to be positioned after the verb part of a sentence (see my previous post on word ordering). For example, consider the sentence “I haven’t bought a new jacket for ages”. There’s a multi-channel sign for ages, so this could be translated to “Jacket new buy ages”.
By the way, today my friend Ben was on See Hear as one of the 4 selected deaf faces of 2008 - take a look.
One of the things that people struggle to understand when learning BSL is how the word ordering differs from English. For example, consider the sentence ‘Why was the black cat climbing the tree in your garden yesterday?’. This would be translated to ‘yesterday your garden tree black cat climb why?’. In BSL, words are normally ordered as follows:
Timeline (yesterday)
Location (your garden)
Object (tree)
Subject (black cat)
Verb (climb)
Question (why)
This is a simple example but can be used to help translate any English to BSL. Note that things like ‘and’, ‘because’ and ‘he said’ split a sentence into multiple parts and should be treated individually.
[Note: I was going to try and translate this post into BSL for the benefit of my readers who sign (there's at least one!) but I have a feeling this post would never appear as I keep putting it off! Maybe next time ]
A very good friend of mine (Ben) is deaf. We’ve known each other about three and a half years but communication at first was very slow because Ben is profoundly deaf, his first language is BSL (British Sign Language) and he also doesn’t lipread. We started with writings on pieces of paper being passed back and forth, followed by Ben teaching some basic fingerspelling (signing letters of the alphabet), followed by an introduction to some rudimentary bits of sign language. At this point I decided that learning BSL properly would not only be really interesting, it’d be damn useful to be able to communicate with Ben by a quicker means other than something similar in speed to morse code. Since then I’ve completed the CACDP BSL level 1 and 2 courses and on Tuesday I started my level 3 course (it was supposed to start in September but has been delayed a few times).
This course is even more time consuming that the two before; level 1 was two hours a week, level 3 was two and a half hours and level 3 is now 3 hours. So for the next 30 weeks (plus any holidays the college has) I’ll be studying 6:30 to 9:30 on Tuesday evenings… phew! Given that we’re up to level 3, I expected the class to be quite small but there were 17 of us - and of course I was the only guy, as with both my previous courses. What is it about guys not wanting to learn BSL? Very few centres appear to offer the level 3 course so this probably has something to do with the class size, along with the fact that it appears to be a lot cheaper than anywhere else!
We started with the usual introductory-type things, working in pairs to discuss our jobs, interests etc and then present to the class on the snippets of information we’d gleaned from our partner. Then after a much-needed tea break we jumped straight into a discussion on some fundamental BSL grammatical concepts. The important thing to realise about BSL (and other sign languages) is that it isn’t simply English represented by visual movements; BSL is an entirely different language in its own right with it’s own word ordering and many other unique approaches to communication (although some people do sign with SSE - Sign Supported English). To give you an idea of the things that make up the language, some of the grammatical items we discussed are as follows:
Classifiers - different hand shapes used in many different ways
Proforms - handshapes that change while signing
Compound signs - merging different signs together to mean something new, e.g. think + true = believe
Placement - using the signing space around you to represent different things, e.g. referring back to a space which can represent someone or something by pointing or eye movement, listing items on fingers and coming back to the same fingers for the same item, signing multiple items simultaneously such as a person getting onto a bus and sitting down etc.
Question forms - express questions simply by raising (closed questions) or narrowing (open questions) the eyebrows, or nodding/shaking of the head to imply you think you know the answer
Negation/Affirmation - nodding or shaking the head to confirm or deny something, e.g. signing ‘computer use’ with a nod would imply you could and with a shake that you can’t
Timelines - up to five directional movements can be used around the body to represent timelines with different meanings
Non-manual features - using facial expressions and body language to give extra meaning or to change the meaning during the use of the sign
Role shifts - representing/simulating different people/animals/etc yourself and switching to others, e.g. to represent two sides of a converstation
It’s difficult to explain some of these without a visual aid and I could be doing this all day so these are just quick summaries - feel free to contact me if you want a more detailed explanation.
So there you go, a quick introduction to my signing history and a glimpse into what a sign language class might involve.
Ok, getting very technical from my normal postings but I found this really difficult to track down so thought it was worth posting somewhere. I’ve creating an application inside the Eclipse framework and wanted to write some HTML and display inside the SWT browser widget. It’s pretty easy to do this with files elsewhere, you simply give the browser widget a URL. However, if you want to load stuff from a local project it turns out to be a bit less obvious (technically this applies to getting access to any files from within an Eclipse project at runtime). So… in great anticipation I’m sure - here’s the code:
Browser browser = new Browser(parent, SWT.NONE);
Bundle plugin = Activator.getDefault().getBundle(); // Where Activator is my org.eclipse.core.runtime.Plugin
IPath relativePagePath = new Path("html/index.html");
URL fileInPlugin = FileLocator.find(plugin, relativePagePath, null);
URL pageUrl = FileLocator.toFileURL(fileInPlugin);
browser.setUrl(pageUrl.toString());
[Update]
I failed to find the time to set this up as a proper project somewhere but here’s the scripts in case anyone wanted to make use of the application:
I’ve been to Italy a couple of times and recently a few people have been asking me for reviews/recommendations so I thought I’d throw them up here for all to see…
Napoli [Naples]: Spent a night here, can’t say it was anything special but the pizza was yummy
Amalfi: Accidentally spent a night here. Very expensive and touristy, wouldn’t recommend it but the coast around there is beautiful.
Ravello: This is on the Amalfi coast and is a lovely little place. Not masses to do there but stunning and peaceful.
Sorrento: Nice enough, we stayed in a suburb which was dirt cheap (accomodation, meals out etc) and felt quite Italian
Capri: Lovely little island off the coast from Sorrento. Touristy in the town of Capri but much nicer in Anacapri. Very expensive though.
Roma [Rome]: The best city I’ve ever been to. If you’re going to spend time wandering round a city, this is the one to do it in. Loads of interesting buildings/ruins round every corner and plenty of gelatarias to stop in!
Pisa: Very nice little place but not much there apart from the obvious. Worth stopping in but you don’t actually need to spend the night (though it has some nice bars/restaurants if you do)
Riomaggiore (Cinque Terra): I absolutely love Cinque Terra - 5 little towns on the coast only accessible by boat or train. Highly recommended.
Lago di Garda [Lake Garda]: We loved it here too. Stayed in a place called Peschiera del Garda which is lovely. The town called Garda is a bit touristy so avoid that. Boat trip to the mountainous end and up the mountain is worthwhile, as is exploring places like Sirmione
Verona: Another lovely city, great for wandering. Would definitely go back here.
Milano [Milan]: Shopping is supposed to be good but didn’t really warm to the place. Not like anywhere else in Italy. If you go here, don’t buy dinner, you get enough free with your drinks in all bars!
Firenze [Florence]: The place to be if you’re interested in art but we’re not cultured enough to appreciate it. Boboli gardens are nice.
Venezia [Venice]: Well, we got engaged here. Really unique and fantastic place - not a car in sight. Love it.
Now these are just my limited experiences so they’re quite biased - don’t take it entirely to heart!
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