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What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?
- Nightshaxx 7y agoThis dude is awesome. Props to him for tackling a challenging situation head on. I wish for him the best!
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoThis comment is made in full good faith. I get that being clear/accurate/specific is important, but isn't this what slang/shortnames are used for? Even in the most conservative engineering positions I've had, slang was used alot, since there are tons of things that have overly long/descriptive/technical terms which no one wants to use in everyday language/communication. The only time you would use them would be in documentation, and even then many times there is a glossary and the shortname would be used.
- shawxe 7y agoBut isn't that exactly what he's doing by inventing these signs--creating shorter names so that it isn't necessary to finger spell everything out explicitly?
- FabHK 7y agoFrom my understanding, that's basically what he did - replace the long tedious name (fully spelled out) by a more snappy symbol signifying the same.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago> This comment is made in full good faith. FYI - per HN guidelines, all comments should be taken as if posted in good faith, including yours :) "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoIn British Sign Language (BSL) when I learnt to a remedial level things like names (places, people, things) would be spelt out the first time, or when it wasn't clear, and then you'd use shorthand - just the first letter, say. Kinda how we use initialisms and other abbreviations in speech/writing. For common topics you'd get local slang that might not even be valid a few towns away -- BSL being somewhat like British-English in that respect!
- FabHK 7y agoDoes the article (well, the video) actually demonstrate the new sign for deoxyribonucleotide or DNA or so? I didn't catch it (not that I understand sign language).
- JoshuaEddy 7y ago"Stem Cell" at 1:55 in the video
- _nalply 7y agoYes this is a beautiful word.
- lordnacho 7y agoThis is a problem in just about every language that isn't English. Since the language of science is English, either you borrow the English word (which interestingly is likely borrowed from Latin) or you know a local word that. But at some stage your local vocabulary runs out, and you wonder whether you should just use English for everything in that domain to make it consistent. I've run into this problem with a load of languages, I just don't know the right word for things like DNA or vector calculus, or it sounds wrong.
- x3n0ph3n3 7y agoHow do you "borrow" spoken words into sign language? You can't, really -- which is why he has to invent hand gestures.
- OJFord 7y agoI suppose the equivalent is (what I now know is called) finger spelling: an unnatural 'sounding' word that breaks the flow, but it's [spelling is] taken from a language where it already exists.
- x3n0ph3n3 7y agoSee how well spelling out words rather than pronouncing them works for you in conversation. This really is a unique problem to adopting spoken words into a non-vocal language.
- _nalply 7y agoDeaf myself: usually we start with fingerspelling. If we discover it being cumbersome we invent something. Borrowing is different but not impossible.
- zapzupnz 7y agoNot to mention the new signs can involve the hand shapes from, say, the first letter of the borrowed English word. Say the word starts with a D, and everybody recognises the fingerspelt word just from the D alone (in context), then the new sign might use the hand shape for D but give it a specific action.
- RosanaAnaDana 7y ago>Frustrated at the lack of complex scientific terms in British Sign Language (BSL) during classes, Liam decided to take matters into his own hands. ::Trombone_sounds.mpg::
- abruzzi 7y agoI would wonder, given that many scientific words--especially in chemistry--are a jumble of root plus prefixes and suffixes (de-oxy-ribo-nucleo-tide), and there are a LOT of these chemistry words, would it be productive to treat the signs the same way. So instead of a single sign for deoxyribonucleotide, you break it into a sort of compound sign that is built up from similar meaning sub parts? I know very little about ASL or BSL to know how much this sort of word construction already happens.
- _nalply 7y agoI am Deaf myself and my Signed Language (Swiss German Sign Language) is special, so I don't know whether my experience is generalizable. It is very possible to agree upon a language with your interpreters and colleagues who are also Deaf. So you create something not official but what works for you and your situation. This approach often works fine for me: try to convey the meaning into movement and dynamics. Signed Languages are very powerful and are conceptually more capable to express something at its core instead giving it a name. Add to this "core" sign a few modifiers like fingerspell the first or the first few letters, and what works very well in Swiss German Sign Language, mouthing, i. e. move the mouth as if you would verbalize but don't make a sound. These mouthings are linguistically known as "mouth pictures". Exactly as loan words, and often the loaned words are mangled horribly but they are just an expedient for communication.
- mabbo 7y agoI studied American Sign Language for 3 years in University (more of a drinking club with credits than anything else). We were taught that a lot of signed language is like this- that signs can be invented as needed and agreed upon and that's just a normal part of what makes Signed languages cool. As a result, it was expected that if we traveled a few hundred km in any direction, the local signs might be dramatically different than the ones we're used to, and so we'd better learn to interpret context and ask what specific words meant.
- _nalply 7y agoCorrect.
- AcerbicZero 7y agoWhy even use sign language, when you could just do real-time speech to text, and just read what is being said? Is that actually less efficient than signing? Edit: So rather than being entirely uneducated on this topic, I'm googling it. There seems to be some disagreement between which is better, and it also appears to be a somewhat sensitive topic (according to non-deaf people who are writing articles about deaf people on the internet. So take that for what its worth)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lozenge 7y agoAre there even any text to speech systems available that are accurate for such a highly technical vocabulary?
- kccqzy 7y agoYes. The more specialized a field is, the easier it is to tailor the speech recognition system for that.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
- pushcx 7y agoOn this side of the pond, the University of Washington has a large and growing ASL STEM dictionary: https://aslstem.cs.washington.edu/ https://aslstem.cs.washington.edu/ I don't know how widely accepted these signs are and it has a serious problem with spambots, but it was useful when I was tutoring a Deaf friend in programming.
- _nalply 7y agoI am Deaf myself and I studied Bachelor of Law at the Swiss Distance Learning University (https://distanceuniversity.ch/ https://distanceuniversity.ch/). For the mandatory attendances (six Saturdays a year in Fribourg) I hired two Signed Language interpreters. Ask me anything.
- sombremesa 7y agoWhy did you capitalize "Deaf"?
- _nalply 7y agoBecause there is a difference between "deaf" and "Deaf". The capitalized word is meant to highlight the cultural and social parts of living in a community with other Deaf people. You also would not write American in the lower case. Being "deaf" is about the handicap, about the loss of hearing and other problems. Being "Deaf" is about being a member of a community, about the keen visual sense, about communicating in a Signed Language, and so on.
- jbverschoor 7y agoSo there are Geeks, Nerds, Programmers now too? Why not capitalize every Noun like in German
- scrollaway 7y agoA question was asked, a response was given. Why do you need to be snarky with the GP?
- npiht 7y agoBecause he perceives the reason as being stupid, and so do I.
- scrollaway 7y ago