[한글과 수어문자] [Korean and sign language]
A New Book on Writing
Korean Sign Language in SignWriting
by Jongtae Kim from Seoul, Korea
July 5, 2025.
A Commentary from Valerie Sutton,
the inventor of the SignWriting Script…
When Jongtae Kim, the author of this comprehensive new reference book [한글과 수어문자], [Korean and sign language], contacted me back in March, 2023, with questions about how to write specific handshapes in Korean Sign Language with the Sutton SignWriting Script, I remember feeling so happy to realize that SignWriting is being used to write Korean Sign Language. It is a big job to categorize all of the handshapes needed to write Korean Sign Language and now, with Jongtae Kim's documentation, and with his remarkable research that was presented at the SignWriting Symposium 2024, Jongtae Kim has given the world a big gift. Korean Sign Language is indeed being written daily now, in 2025. Jongtae Kim's published research comparing the "featural aspects" of the Hangeul Script with the SignWriting Script will open your eyes to the enormous amount of detail and painstaking analysis necessary to make this possible. Korean Sign Language is now, indeed, a written language.
My gratitude to Jongtae Kim and to the Korean Deaf Community!
Valerie Sutton
June 9, 2025
Inventor, SignWriting
sutton@signwriting.org
www.SignWriting.org |
| Video 1. Valerie Sutton thanks the Korean translators and publishers of a recently published translation of a SignWriting Lessons Book, "SignoEscritura", into Korean Sign Language and Korean spoken language. The 2-part Korean book series is a translation of the 2007 SignWriting Lessons Book, "SignoEscritura", written and illustrated in Spanish Sign Language (LSE) by Steve and Dianne Parkhurst. Now Korean SignWriting users have their own translation with diagrams written in Korean Sign Language. Thank you for the gift of the beautiful books and also two calendars written in Korean Sign Language... The original book, "SignoEscritura", in Spanish and Spanish Sign Language (LSE) can be downloaded here: https://www.signwriting.org/archive/d... The original book, "SignoEscritura", in English and Spanish Sign Language (LSE) can be downloaded here: https://www.signwriting.org/archive/d... |
