1.Having more ASL medical interpreters is a very important job. Being able to get the medicalattention you need is a right I believe every person should have, and without interpreters, somemembers of the Deaf community cannot have this. With more ASL interpreters, Deaf peoplewould be able to properly explain their medical conditions, and have a relationship withhealthcare. I do think that being an interpreter would be difficult, because you would have to befluent in both English and ASL, and there would be a lot of pressure on you, because you aredealing with the personal information of your client. What you translate impacts their health,and that could potentially be a stressful job to have.
2.Signed languages are natural human languages used by deaf people around the world as their primary language. This chapter explores the linguistic study of signed language, their linguistic properties, and aspects of their genetic and historical relationships. The chapter focuses on historical change that has occurred in signed languages, showing that the same linguistic processes that contribute to historical change in spoken languages, such as lexicalization, grammaticization, and semantic change, contribute to historical change in signed languages. Historical influences unique to signed languages, such as the educational approach of borrowing and adapting signs and an effort to create a system of representing the surrounding spoken/written language and of the incorporation of lexicalized fingerspelling are also discussed.
3.SignWriting is not a philosophy. It is simply a way to read and write signs.
Reading and writing has many applications in life - It is up to the writers to make their decisions, as to how they want to apply it.
So SignWriting is used differently in 18 countries. Some groups use it for research - for example - a research project at Salk Institute is using SignWriting to record classifiers, because English gloss is not adequate enough. Other groups use it in Deaf Education, such as the Nicaraguan Sign Language Project and the Concordia School For Deaf Children in Porto Alegre, Brazil. And some teachers use SignWriting in classes to record signs for their hearing students in vocabulary lists, such as the classes for parents of deaf children, in Denmark and Norway.
The SignWriting Literacy Project, which is free to schools using American Sign Language (ASL), donates Sign Language Literature to classrooms with Deaf students. Some teachers use the SignWriting materials to teach ASL, and others use them to teach English. In other words, SignWriting can be applied differently in each classroom, depending on the teacher.
4."Glossing" is what you call it when you write one language in another. The written information is known as "gloss."
When we see someone signing and we write it down or type it out sign for sign and include various notations to account for the facial and body grammar that goes with the signs--we are "glossing ASL."
When you gloss, you are not trying to interpret a language. Rather you are attempting to transcribe it. Your goal is to write it down, type it, or otherwise represent it in text form -- word for word
