Comparative sign language may not be the easiest subject to follow, so let’s begin with a simple example:
In New Zealand, on the other hand, you’d go right to the heart of the matter, twirling your fist in small circles at shoulder height the way a hooker twirls her pearls.
These tidbits from the lighter side of sign language came up in casual conversation Monday among interpreters for the deaf at California State University, Northridge.
The interpreters had gathered in CSUN’s National Center on Deafness Library for a brief ceremony in which a young woman—one of the first eight New Zealanders trained as interpreters for the deaf—thanked CSUN for its contributions to her country’s nascent program to cultivate its native sign language.
First Dictionary of Its KindShe gave the library a copy of “Introduction to New Zealand Sign Language,” the first published dictionary of the native language of New Zealand’s 6,000 deaf. The 1,200-sign dictionary was written by Dan Levitt, senior interpreter for CSUN’s deafness center, while on a year’s leave of absence in New Zealand.
And, the twirling fist helps to illustrate why a country where most of the people already speak the King’s English would need a separate dictionary of sign language.
For, wherever the deaf are, they develop their own sign language. American Sign Language developed from French and American strains, Levitt said.
New Zealand sign, coming from a British tradition, became a distinct language that had never been formally codified. Since 1880, the country’s educational system had promoted lip reading and phonetic training to teach standard English, with sign language relegated to substandard status.
By 1980, however, the failure of the oral tradition to achieve literacy among the deaf persuaded the New Zealand’s Education Department to try an approach allowing formal instruction in signing.
Levitt was retained to teach the first class. In 1985, when Levitt returned to CSUN to become director of the Self Actualization Institute for the Deaf, in Hollywood, said he found his New Zealand assignment more challenging than he had expected.
Though he had been assured that there was a standard text for New Zealand Sign Language, this turned out to be for the sign language system called Australasian, a synthesized representation of English with syntax, conjugations, prefixes and suffixes.
But it was not the language of deaf New Zealanders. Their language was spontaneous and could include a subject, verb and object in a single sign.
“Though universal among the deaf over 18, it had been so suppressed, Levitt said, that many people upon first meeting refuse to admit that they even know sign language.”
Drafted 8 Students
Levitt recruited eight students to become the nation’s first interpreters. To teach them a language that he did not yet know himself, he began writing the dictionary.
“Dan had to ask people to come to class, sit and talk and tell us stories,” said Rachel Locker, who presented the book to CSUN on Monday. She plans to return to CSUN for summer classes in sign language education.
Levitt said he leaves the book will make people of the New Zealand more comfortable with their native language.
“People do look at the written word as legitimizing a language,” he said. “So we had to do something in writing.”
