New term “sord”
Sord (n. pl sords). A sign word or a combination of handshape, palm orientation, location, movement, or non-manual marker. This term is coined by blending sign and word. It is equivalent to the meaning of word of spoken or written languages, however expressed with hand.
Explanation
The sign language used in Malaysia is called Malaysian Sign Language or BIM. It is an independent language. Deaf people generally converse in their local sign language. BIM allows Deaf people to communicate their thought and feeling to other people who can understand BIM. Similar to spoken and written languages, the sign languages have their own grammatical structure. The difference is BIM and other sign languages are expressed with hands. The sign languages do not have written form yet.
Each language has a collection of words. Sign language also has a collection of words. However, the term “sign” is often used to replace “word” when reference is made to any sign language. Generally, people would tend use this phrase “BIM sign”. The phrases “BIM word”, “BIM sign word”, and the like would never been seen almost everywhere as these phrases are perceived weird or inappropriate to them. As BIM is a language, it should be appropriate to use “BIM word” instead of “BIM sign”. The term “sign” is not equivalent to the term “word” for their role in conveying our thought and feeling.
The term “word” must be associated to sound. The “word” is deemed inappropriate when “BIM word” is phrased. The “sign” is also deemed inappropriate when “BIM sign” is phrased as it suggests pantomime instead of linguistic aspect. Therefore, “sign word” looks better than “word” or “sign” alone, however, it only further suggests that a sign language does not have its own structure. It even indicates that spoken languages can be pronounced, written and now signed (See translation issues below). Therefore, it is necessary to coin the new term “sord” which is meant only for sign languages, to indicate that every verbalisation in sign languages is a sord, which is equivalent to every word in spoken/written languages.
Translation issues
Generally people would understand that English words are unable to be translated literally into any other languages due to different cultural aspect. However, people often expect that all sords allow literal translation of spoken or written languages. See examples below.
When they ask “how do you pronounce dignity?”, you would respond to it by using your voice. When they ask “how do you spell dignity?”, you would write the word on a paper. So now when they ask “how do you sign dignity?”, of course you would sign the word. The pattern suggests that verb words “pronounce”, “spell” and “sign” are within same category, i.e. the languages can be expressed in three ways.
These three responses have same pattern and the last response suggests that any words can be expressed through pronunciation, spelling and even signing. It could be perceived that a sign language does not have its own structure. The same perspective could be seen in English dictionary, when it defines verb “sign”: to express (a word or thought) in a sign language.
Written by Anthony Chong