Talk:Ukrainian Sign Language

Incorrect redirect to Russian Sign Language. Ukrainian Sign Language is a seperate, distinct sign language. See uk:Українська_жестова_мова for more--Piznajko (talk) 18:42, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Claims made in Bickford 2005

Bickford 2005 work is the only source that makes a far-fetched claim that Ukrainian Sign Language and Russian Sign Language are so similar, that they very between each other as the sign varieties of various Russian cities are to each other. Other sources don't confirm this.

For instance, see interview with Ukrainian Sign Language pedagogue Hanna Kamongar for Vsesvit Journal, where she states that "Ukrainain Sign Language is different from Russian Sign Language, although they both have gestures that are common between the two" (Ганна Камонгар. Код сурдо, або Як розмовляють руки (in Ukrainian). It's understandable that there are gestures that are common between the two - regular spoken/written Ukrainian and Russian languages also have around 60% similar vocabulary, since they are both Slavic languages; yet it's generally accepted that Russian and Ukrainian are two separate languages.

• Also, based on what Bickford claims in his research paper, it seems like he didn't have much informaiton about Ukrainian SL (and it seems no data was obtained firsthand during field studies in Ukraine). On page 15 he says: "I have little information about Ukrainian SL [UKL]. Gitlits (1975:44) mentions that there were 319 Deaf clubs in the country. Carmel (1992) lists several dictionaries published in Kyiv (Ivanusheva 1969, Maksimenko, Ivanusheva and Shchur 1987, Sapozhnikov and Filyanina 1971)."

• Lastly, Ukrainian sign language is a subset of French Sign Language --Piznajko (talk) 09:30, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Unless you have a RS that contradicts the one I used, we have no reason to doubt it and therefor the info stays. Nothing you have shown here contradicts Bickford, and Glottolog also reports that USL is in the Russian family.

Rather that sorting the wheat from the chaff, I reverted all your changes apart from the Romaniv source and the speaker pop. (The date of the latter needs to be verified -- was the data itself from 2015, or just the publication?)

Specifically, we need sources that:

• USL is an independent branch of the FSL family, rather than a member of the RSL branch per the sources we do have
• the lexical similarity of USL and RSL is less than the figure given by Bickford
• USL was already a distinct language when the Romaniv school was opened in 1805: if so, its history must be older than that, and you need to indicate when and where it started, unless it was invented specifically for that school, which would also require a source.

— kwami (talk) 00:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to add that the data I reported on in 2005 is simply one small piece of the question. It makes no claims as to whether Russian SL and Ukranian SL are the same language or different languages, nor whether they belong to the same family. That degree of lexical similarity (given the methodology we used in that study) is compatible with any of those conclusions. All the study says is that there was more shared vocabulary between USL and RSL than they shared with other languages in Eastern Europe. That could be due to either borrowing or genetic relatedness. Although that amount of lexical variation is found within some signing communities that are generally regarded as single languages, that doesn't automatically mean that RSL and USL are the same language, because you can also find that degree of similarity between separate but related languages. More generally, lexical similarity is not enough to settle the question, because it only measures one aspect of the whole situation.

I know: I'm repeating and rephrasing what is quoted in the article, but it seems important to emphasize these points, to make clear what I did and did not say. In particular, I did *not* make the claim attributed to me in the first paragraph of this section; that claim is indeed far-fetched, and goes far beyond what I said.

Currently I'd note that the ISO 639-3 standard assigns separate language codes to RSL and USL. This, however, is not conclusive either, as the codes probably were established even before my study, hence on the basis of no better evidence than I had available then. Ultimately, what is needed is studies of mutual-intelligibility which are carefully controlled to rule out the well-known phenomenon that two people who know different sign languages can often communicate. I'm not aware of any such studies having been done for these two languages. Failing that, anecdotal evidence can sometimes be used--but again, for WP, I agree with @Kwamikagami: that such evidence needs to first be independently published in reliable sources. BTW, nothing I have to say here should be taken as favoring either side in this debate. AlbertBickford (talk) 21:23, 8 March 2016 (UTC) -- Corrected template coding AlbertBickford (talk) 04:41, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

I just made several edits to that particular section to reduce the argumentative tone (which seems to have been directed more at Kwami's revert than at a normal audience that is just looking for information. For the same reason, achieving a more NPOV, I shortened it and placed it in a less prominent place. Of course, since the article being described is one that I wrote, I invite other editors (not involved in the original controversy) to review it and verify that it does maintain a NPOV.

Related to this, I adjusted the Infobox to remove classification of USL under RSL. The evidence that has been gathered in the article (including my own article) does not justify such a classification. I'd note that the classification under Austro-Hungarian and French SL is justified only on the basis of the history of contact between languages, not the wordlist comparisons I did, but I'm not going to contest that classification.

Finally, I made a few edits elsewhere in the article, mostly very minor wording changes. I hope people will regard these all as improvements, but if not, please don't revert the whole lot (which I think most people will accept), just make a further change to what you think needs fixing. AlbertBickford (talk) 05:21, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing some of the article's grammar/stylistic/other errors (I'm afraid those were made by me). Much appreciated!--Piznajko (talk) 16:57, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

One final comment: If anyone wants to abbreviate further this section about USL/RSL/MSL, I wouldn't object. AlbertBickford (talk) 07:06, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

(OK, that wasn't my final comment.) Kwami noted that Glottolog classifies USL as part of a "Russian Sign" family, with constituents that include USL, RSL, and MSL. However, Glottolog cites no basis for that classification, so I don't consider that to be a reliable source. AlbertBickford (talk) 07:42, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

I see that Piznajko just deleted any mention of a connection to Russian Sign Language from the lead paragraph, on the basis that the nature of the relation between those two languages is not well-enough established to mention there. As he points out, the issue is covered later in the article. For the record, as the author of the source that is cited later, I agree with his change. AlbertBickford (talk) 21:47, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Different new sources

Developments on how to translate USL using software tools, namely:

• A 2016 Phd thesis on USL (Olha Lozynska) --Piznajko (talk) 07:24, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
• A 2014 research paper on USL (Olha Lozynska)--Piznajko (talk) 17:01, 13 March 2016 (UTC)