The Taiwanese Deaf Alliance and other groups yesterday called on the government to use Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) instead of signed Mandarin in a book planned for toddlers, saying that TSL is a natural language that should be treated as distinct from Mandarin.
Due to its inclusion in the Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法), which was passed by the Legislative Yuan on Dec. 25, 2018, TSL has gradually gained attention, the alliance said in a joint statement with 26 other hearing loss associations.
The Social and Family Affairs Administration is in the process of creating an electronic book to teach sign language to children under the age of three, they said.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
However, it plans to use signed Mandarin, also known as “grammatical sign language,” they said.
Signed Mandarin, which follows Mandarin grammar, is not a “real” language, while TSL is an independent language with its own grammatical rules, they said.
Using signed Mandarin in the book would be to treat local sign language as an attachment to Mandarin, and to mistake language as something that can be translated word-for-word, they said.
It would go against the spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as the act, they said.
To facilitate the preservation, revitalization and development of TSL, the teaching material should use the natural language used by people with hearing impairments, they said.
While TSL is a language with its own developmental history, signed Mandarin is not a sign language, New Power Party Legislator Claire Wang (王婉諭), who sits on the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, told a news conference in Taipei.
For people with a hearing impairment, TSL is their native language and a culture that should be respected, she said.
Instead of giving parents more options, presenting signed Mandarin alongside TSL in teaching materials would be to treat an artificial system as a real language, said Chen Yi-jun (陳怡君), an assistant professor at Mackay Medical College’s Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology.
Signed Mandarin follows the word order of spoken language and is difficult to understand and far less valid as a means of communication than TSL, she said.
Signed Mandarin also undermines the logic and grammatical characteristics of a visual language, she said.
It is difficult for children with a hearing impairment who learn visually and do not have a foundation in spoken language to learn signed Mandarin, she said.
Teaching toddlers signed Mandarin would be forcing them to use signs to learn Mandarin, instead of allowing them to learn TSL, a visual language, Taiwan Sign Language Research and Development Association representative Pan Hsin-hung (潘信宏) said.
This is a form of discrimination, he said, adding that it forces children with hearing impairments to not identify with their own culture and language, and to instead learn a separate, artificial language.
Article 4 of the act states that all national languages should be equal and people should not be discriminated against or face restrictions when using a national language, Pan said.
Requiring people with hearing impairments to learn Mandarin through signs would be to deny them the right to their own language and a form of cultural and linguistic discrimination, he said.
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