Words in Hand

Well, I wonder how quickly you got the signs? And how surprised you were at the ideas that hearing people come up with. Sometimes they strayed from the meaning, and have strange ideas about what the signs actually mean. Even signs that seem obvious to us - like 'tree' - weren't always understood immediately. Signs like 'boil' gave them so much difficulty. So let us look closer at the link between the form of those signs, and what they mean.

In 'tree', we could say that it's showing us the shape of a tree: the trunk and the branches. It reminds us a little of a picture that children draw, when they start to paint or draw. That's for 'tree'.

For 'boil', it's showing us - or trying to imitate - the action of the water boiling.

For 'bell', it's a bit different. It's actually copying an action, but it also includes the idea of holding the bell. So it's really showing someone jangling the bell.

In 'submarine', we have clues to help in both the shape of the submarine and the type - the way - that it moves. One handshape represents the submarine going down and the other handshape represents the water and so the submarine goes underwater. So it gives us two parts of information: the water and the submarine.

With the sign 'dribble', the handshape copies the action, but extra information is also there with the legs. What is moving as they dribble, in and out? The legs.

We will look more closely at these links later. But before that, we might like to see how well deaf people can identify the meaning of signs. We assume that it's easier for deaf people to understand the sign, even if they have never seen the sign before. So we decided to give our deaf team some foreign signs to see if they could get their meaning. We thought that deaf people would get it easier, as they know how signs are made. We thought that deaf people would be much better at this than hearing people. Let's have a look and see.