Deaf Sign Languages and Manually Coded English
MCE can be used with Simultaneous Communication — speaking and signing at the same time. This is not possible with, for example, American Sign Language, because it has a very different grammar (including word order) than English. Deaf sign languages make use of spatial relationships, facial expression, and body positioning, while MCE tends to be a linear and purely manual communication system, not to be confused with a language.
Comprehensibility of such simultaneously produced MCE has, however, been shown to be compromised in practice. While experience can improve the degree to which the information coded in English (morphologically as well as syntactically) is successfully communicated manually, there appear to be limits, and attempting to code everything (as required by the more "rigorous" manual coded like SEE) for more than very brief messages is extremely taxing on the person communciating simutaneously.
In English-speaking countries, it is common for users of Deaf sign languages to code-switch into a form of MCE when conversing with someone whose dominant language is English, or when quoting something from English. MCE is also sometimes favored by hearing people, for whom a manual version of their own language is much easier to learn than a deaf sign language.
Read more about this topic: Manually Coded English
Famous quotes containing the words deaf, sign, languages, coded and/or english:
“This habit of free speaking at ladies’ lunches has impaired society; it has doubtless led to many of the tragedies of divorce and marital unhappiness. Could society be deaf and dumb and Congress abolished for a season, what a happy and peaceful life one could lead!”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“If we define a sign as an exact reference, it must include symbol because a symbol is an exact reference too. The difference seems to be that a sign is an exact reference to something definite and a symbol an exact reference to something indefinite.”
—William York Tindall (1903–1981)
“No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.”
—Lewis Thomas (b. 1913)
“English Bob: What I heard was that you fell off your horse, drunk, of course, and that you broke your bloody neck.
Little Bill Daggett: I heard that one myself, Bob. Hell, I even thought I was dead. ‘Til I found out it was just that I was in Nebraska.”
—David Webb Peoples, screenwriter. English Bob (Richard Harris)