In the Land of Invented Languages - Arika Okrent [63]
Something else took its place—a spontaneous sort of pidgin signing now called International Sign. It had actually been around long before Gestuno. Whenever deaf people of different sign language backgrounds get together at international events (like the Deaf Olympics, which began in the 1920s), they quickly find a way to communicate with one another. They sign more slowly, gesture, and repeat information in multiple ways, and pretty soon they come to a sort of miniature, incomplete, conventional agreement. They negotiate a standard, but one that is less reliable than any full sign language.
However, that standard, and a pretty good level of communication, is achieved far more quickly and easily than it ever could be between people who speak different spoken languages. That is because while the iconic imagery is not the primary principle on which sign languages depend, it is undeniably there, and it has the potential to be exploited. Spoken languages have this potential as well (something can last a “long” time or a “loooooooong” time) but a whole lot less of it.
Imagery, in signs or in symbols, isn't suitable for communication on its own. It must be interpreted, its meaning guessed at. But in a situation where the guesses can be constrained, where two people can use context and feedback from each other to put a limit on the possible interpretations, it is extremely useful. The teachers at the OCCC understood this, and what they did with the children was set up just such a situation. When a child wanted to say “dream” but did not have a symbol for it on her board, she pointed to “sleep + think.” Her teacher guessed from the context that she meant “dream,” and the child confirmed that guess. If a child tried a combination and the teacher guessed wrong, the teacher could take another guess, or the child could try a different approach. Communication had always been a guessing game for these children, but before Blissymbols they had no way to constrain the guesses. If a child had needs-based pictures to point to, he might have tried to say “dream” by pointing to a picture of a bed. Then the adult would ask, “Do you want to go to bed? Do you want to get your pillow? Is there a problem in your bedroom?” and the child would have no power to direct the line of questioning. When the children learned Blissymbols, and a method for representing abstract concepts through combination, they finally had a way to actively put limits on interpretation.
And this changed their lives tremendously. On my Toronto trip, I asked another of Shirley's former students how he used to communicate before he learned Blissymbolics. He typed out a one-word answer on his computer: “Kick.”
Though Blissymbols was a huge improvement over what was available to the children before, it was still not good enough. The children could communicate about almost anything with their teachers, parents, and others who were familiar with the special mechanics of negotiated agreement that Blissymbols required, but they couldn't do this with just anyone. They had access to communication, but not full access. They had a very useful tool, but not a language.
So the OCCC staff modified and adapted Bliss's system in order to make it serve as a bridge to English. They added the alphabet to the symbol boards, so the kids, before they had fully learned to spell, could constrain a symbol by pointing to the first letter of the word they intended. Teachers using the symbols in other countries made adjustments in accordance with the requirements of their spoken languages: In Hungary, they changed the order of the