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Comment by rblatz | Hacker News Reader

So from my memory of ASL in college there was less worry about being rude or not offending. So if you were asked who someone was, you would start with their most identifiable feature. So if they are the only black guy in the room, or the most over weight you’d sign the black guy or the fat guy. Whereas in English it’s basically a joke now that we’d use just about any other descriptor besides those.

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I would guess that has more to do with speaking in private rather than anything else. If one knows that the black guy or the fat guy or someone who loves them won't hear them, they'll refer to them however they would like. Same goes for anyone who speaks a minority language; I've had a few very good eastern European and Asian friends who told me later how I was being referred to by somebody who seemed entirely civil in English.

I don't think so.

My deaf BSL instructor said that it was about being understood clearly, and just about deaf culture. If you're in a room of people signing everyone can see you're saying "who is the fat guy at the bar" so there's no point in being euphemistic. Might be a UK deaf culture thing.

I live in the US and have a deaf mother-in-law. This is true here too.

Does the language have the sort of precision required to say something like "rotund gentleman" instead? If not I can't really blame someone from saying something in the most polite way a language practically allows.

Limited practical knowledge here (beginner ASL and some time in a linguistics research lab) - there are fewer synonyms, but facial expression and other movements make a huge difference. Much like German adds suffixes that can really change the meanings of words, a eyebrow or tongue movement can modify a sign in ASL.

Another reason ASL has fewer synonyms is that it’s not a horrible amalgamation of a ton of different languages like English is (English has a weirdly large vocabulary, like 3 times as large as some other languages). ASL is a direct descendant of French SL, no weird mixing. Moroccan SL, in contrast, is a descendent/hybrid of several languages and it, as an example, has like a million different handshapes for different kinds of insects.

Further, a word-sentence model is too limited to describe sign languages (I know this applies ASL and Moroccan SL, not sure about others). For example, a large set of concepts are expressed through classifiers. Classifiers are systems of hand-shapes, spatial locations (e.g. side of head vs in front of chest), and motions which can specify a objects (including its shape, size, and location) and also the objects’s verb and relationship with other objects. Some people mistakenly think classifiers are a form of pantomime, but classifier motions and hand shapes have specified and limited meanings (e.g. the flat rectangular object classifier is not making a rectangle shape, it’s more of a pinching motion). That’s just one example of how sign languages diverge from a word-sentence model, many more differences exist.

The main take away is that sign languages work differently from spoken languages, it’s not that easy to compare 1-to-1. There’s definitely no word that means “rotund” in ASL, but there are certainly grammar structures that let you express that.

Although you could, there’s no need to soften or euphemize physical characteristics in American Deaf culture. You can just sign “that fat person over there” and it’s not considered rude.

ASL does have a large heritage from French Sign Language, but it also was influenced by Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha%27s_Vineyard_Sign_Lan...

Classifiers aren't unique to ASL or signed languages, though how they're expressed does differ somewhat due to the medium. For example in Japanese, counting objects requires classifiers, like 'hon' for cylindrical objects or 'nin' for people.

Based on my very limited experience and the posts above, I'd say sign languages don't really have the luxury of having many "synonyms" with slightly different connotations, at least in the same way you'd list words in a dictionary. jbergstroem mentions "always trying to find the simplest way of explaining yourself", so I think the idea is people just say things how they are, in simple terms. I imagine ideas like politeness are instead conveyed in other body language, facial expressions maybe, instead of dancing with words.

But I'm just speculating, I'd love to hear someone's firsthand experiences here.

"hear" ASL

"first hand" Then, second hand.

True in Spanish as well, in my experience.

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