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What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

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Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#31

Post by _nalply »

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #8
lordnacho wrote: post #7

This is a problem in just about every language that isn't English. Since the language of science is English, either you borrow the English word (which interestingly is likely borrowed from Latin) or you know a local word that. But at some stage your local vocabulary runs out, and you wonder whether you should just use English for everything in that domain to make it consistent. I've run into this problem with a load…

How do you "borrow" spoken words into sign language? You can't, really -- which is why he has to invent hand gestures.

Deaf myself: Often you can incorporate a fingerspelled letter into a sign, so some borrowing still happens. Where I live mouth pictures are important, so often you sign the general concept and mouth a part of the complicated word.

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#32

Post by jbverschoor »

_nalply wrote: post #29
sombremesa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you capitalize "Deaf"?

Because there is a difference between "deaf" and "Deaf". The capitalized word is meant to highlight the cultural and social parts of living in a community with other Deaf people. You also would not write American in the lower case. Being "deaf" is about the handicap, about the loss of hearing and other problems. Being "Deaf" is about being a member of a community, about the keen visual sense, about communicating in a…

So there are Geeks, Nerds, Programmers now too?

Why not capitalize every Noun like in German

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#33

Post by AcerbicZero »

WorldMaker wrote: post #23
AcerbicZero wrote: post #15

Why even use sign language, when you could just do real-time speech to text, and just read what is being said? Is that actually less efficient than signing? Edit: So rather than being entirely uneducated on this topic, I'm googling it. There seems to be some disagreement between which is better, and it also appears to be a somewhat sensitive topic (according to non-deaf people who are writing articles about deaf peop…

I'm not deaf, I only studied ASL in HS and it included some useful lessons on Capital-D Deaf Culture. So I'm not much more of an expert on the subject by any means, but I love language studies. Efficiency is only one spectrum in play. Sign languages are languages distinct and evolutionarily unique from spoken languages. Early attempts such as "Signed English" attempted to minimize the distinction between the spoken l…

Wow there is so much more there than I realized at first. I probably should have realized that any communication system would have layers, and when you're restricted to a subset of visual signals there would be all sorts of intricacies. The dual-language comment also lines up with a lot of what I've read this morning on the topic, in that many folks who use ASL full time have commented that written English can almost feel like a second language to them.

Seriously though, thank you very much for sharing your perspective on this. It's awesome to ask a question (in an area where I have no domain knowledge) and get such a high quality responses.

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#34

Post by scrollaway »

jbverschoor wrote: post #32
_nalply wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is a difference between "deaf" and "Deaf". The capitalized word is meant to highlight the cultural and social parts of living in a community with other Deaf people. You also would not write American in the lower case. Being "deaf" is about the handicap, about the loss of hearing and other problems. Being "Deaf" is about being a member of a community, about the keen visual sense, about communicating in a…

So there are Geeks, Nerds, Programmers now too? Why not capitalize every Noun like in German

A question was asked, a response was given. Why do you need to be snarky with the GP?

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#35

Post by ZephyrP »

abruzzi wrote: post #13

I would wonder, given that many scientific words--especially in chemistry--are a jumble of root plus prefixes and suffixes (de-oxy-ribo-nucleo-tide), and there are a LOT of these chemistry words, would it be productive to treat the signs the same way. So instead of a single sign for deoxyribonucleotide, you break it into a sort of compound sign that is built up from similar meaning sub parts? I know very little about…

I once asked a deaf programmer how technical concepts were communicated. He explained that most non-practitioners would use finger-spelling but that a parlance among deaf programmers existed to convey a variety of technical terms. I vividly recall the sign for "Port Scanning" made by tracing an oblong ellipse oriented upwards with your index finger and then "pushing" that finger through the imaginary figure 3-4 times from the top going downwards.

I imagine a similar set of signs arising in different disciplines.

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#36

Post by fao_ »

frenchyatwork wrote: post #25
edgarvaldes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In spanish it is Ácido DesoxirriboNucleico. It's very easy to construct, given that "ácido", "des" and "nucleico" have latin roots.

Both Spanish and English have a fair bit of influence from Latin and from languages that were influenced by Latin. A better example would be what the word is in Swahili, or Mandarin.

> Both Spanish and English have a fair bit of influence from Latin and from languages that were influenced by Latin.

I think you're missing the point. OP claimed that English is the language of science in most other languages. The parent showed, using an example from Spanish, that the actual language of science in most languages is Latin.

It is neither here nor there whether or not the language is latin-derived. And regardless, it's not possible to distinguish whether or not it is 'English' or 'Latin' from examples from non-latin-derived languages because English-speaking scientific establishments, up until the 1800s (and even to this day in some fields like botany, etc.) uses Latin nomenclature in scientific work. Most of the examples that you can find, the examples in the foreign language, English, and Latin are all going to match (I believe the exception is Medical German -- practitioners in Germany have to learn both the German and Latin versions) and it is difficult to prove without specific work into the foreign etymology, that in that case the foreign language is following Latin and not English!

In case I haven't made myself clear, it's trivial to take your Swahili question to demonstrate the point. According to Google Translate (I couldn't find a Wiktionary entry for it) in Swahili it is "asidi deoxyribonucleic". Now, is this because it follows the English form or the Latin form? You can't know without doing some digging into the Swahili Etymology.

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#37

Post by _nalply »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #15

Why even use sign language, when you could just do real-time speech to text, and just read what is being said? Is that actually less efficient than signing? Edit: So rather than being entirely uneducated on this topic, I'm googling it. There seems to be some disagreement between which is better, and it also appears to be a somewhat sensitive topic (according to non-deaf people who are writing articles about deaf peop…

I am Deaf myself. It really depends. One of the problems of transcribing stuff is that some nuances are lost. Ask yourself: how is the experience between being there yourself or reading a transcript online?

So, usually for social sciences it is a lot better to have a Signed Language interpreter. For hard science it depends on the lecturer. If I have someone droning on, a transcript would be easier on my nerves. If I however have a really good lecturer, a Signed Language is better in catching what is said.

You need to consider that lectures are only one part of what you use to study. Also very important are books and self-study. In this light transcripts are just something like a book and we all know that it is not a good idea to learn from books only.

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#38

Post by fao_ »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #33
WorldMaker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not deaf, I only studied ASL in HS and it included some useful lessons on Capital-D Deaf Culture. So I'm not much more of an expert on the subject by any means, but I love language studies. Efficiency is only one spectrum in play. Sign languages are languages distinct and evolutionarily unique from spoken languages. Early attempts such as "Signed English" attempted to minimize the distinction between the spoken l…

Wow there is so much more there than I realized at first. I probably should have realized that any communication system would have layers, and when you're restricted to a subset of visual signals there would be all sorts of intricacies. The dual-language comment also lines up with a lot of what I've read this morning on the topic, in that many folks who use ASL full time have commented that written English can almost…

> Wow there is so much more there than I realized at first.

The eternal cry of the hackernewser upon finding that other subjects as well as computer science exist.

(EDIT: To clarify, I'm not intending to dunk on the parent poster specifically, rather call out how many people in this community and in the hacker community continually ignore the fact that, not only do other subjects exist, but they also have a lot of knowledge that isn't necessarily self-evident, and the issue has different constraints and priorities. A lot of the posts on here feel like nobody learned anything from the idiots that set up Metamed).

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#39

Post by _nalply »

jbverschoor wrote: post #32
_nalply wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is a difference between "deaf" and "Deaf". The capitalized word is meant to highlight the cultural and social parts of living in a community with other Deaf people. You also would not write American in the lower case. Being "deaf" is about the handicap, about the loss of hearing and other problems. Being "Deaf" is about being a member of a community, about the keen visual sense, about communicating in a…

So there are Geeks, Nerds, Programmers now too? Why not capitalize every Noun like in German

Just one example of many why this is different: Our hearing sons learn our Signed Language at home. Then when they go to school they suddenly have a different language. They are in the same situation as Mexican children in an American school.

Did you see my careful use of the capital letter?

Re: What's Deoxyribonucleotide in Sign Language?

#40

Post by _nalply »

JoshuaEddy wrote: post #10
FabHK wrote: post #6

Does the article (well, the video) actually demonstrate the new sign for deoxyribonucleotide or DNA or so? I didn't catch it (not that I understand sign language).

"Stem Cell" at 1:55 in the video

Yes this is a beautiful word.
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