British Sign Language (BSL)

British sign language is the means of communication used to a greater or lesser extent by the majority of the deaf community in Great Britain. As a hearing learner of BSL I have discovered a wonderful new dimension in communication, which has found me new friends and would be of tremendous use for hearing people to have even the basics of this expressive language.

Rather than learn a sign for each word in English then stringing them together to form a sentence, BSL is far more efficient. Signs are combined with facial expression and with the speed, size and direction of movement to combine several ideas into one sign. This way a learner can say far more with only a few signs than he or she could with a new spoken language.

I have started an 18 week course to cover CACDP level 1. This course is the UK recognised sign language course. One of the unfortunate things about CACDP is that it is examined by English BSL examiners, who don't recognise the Scottish signs. As a result the pass rate for Scottish students especially at level 2 is lower than it is in England.

The course is being taught by the same deaf tutor who taught the SCOTVEC first level course. His name is Ken McCall and you can see him in this picture which his wife took after I had flown with him the katana. We flew from Cumbernauld to Stirling then to Callander over loch Katrine North of Ben Lomond down loch Lomond over Drymen back to Stirling then to Cumbernauld. Ken is a true gentleman, who loves teaching sign language and who truly enjoys the company of his students. One evening in the Deaf Club in Glasgow he told me (in sign) that he had never been flying in a light aircraft, so I invited him to come with me. After a few cancellations because of Scotland's unreliable weather we eventually flew.

This is Ken's wife sitting in the plane with her "Toy Boy"!

Links to pages about BSL

DeafScape Internet UK

http://www.weizmann.ac.il/deaf-info/home.html

DEAF-L FAQ WWW DeafUK!

http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/dsn/dhoh/WWW_communication.htm

http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/special.html

http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/countries/Unit.html

http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/special.html

http://dww.deafworldweb.org/ http://www.webcom.com/deafax/

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