It would seem that there’s actually a lot of individual variation in Norwegian Sign Language fingerspelling, she did mention that, that there’s variation by age and dialect and all sorts of things. She warned me that she never became super proficient in signing herself, so when her fingerspelling was different from the video I’d found, that it could in part just be that she was “rusty” — like a lot of older people, she’s fairly socially isolated, she doesn’t get many visits even from her daughter, which means she doesn’t get many opportunities to practice signing.

Aside from fingerspelling, she also taught me a few basic signs, like signs for “cow” and “milk” (specifically the third variant listed in Tegnordbok), and some other signs that I immediately forgot.

This wasn’t my first time meeting someone who knew Norwegian Sign Language, because I did meet a Deaf woman last year, and she showed me and the others in that room a few signs. That woman preferred to speak Norwegian and mostly just learned Norwegian Sign Language as a way to respect her culture.

After meeting that Deaf woman last year, I had thought about taking sign language classes myself, but I worried that I wouldn’t be able to look signers in the eyes, which is a vital skill for signing. I did hear that for many of those who normally hate making eye contact, that that aversion magically disappears when signing, but I’d had my doubts that that was actually the case. When that Deaf woman had showed off those signs, I was sitting to her side, so I couldn’t have looked in her eyes just from the position I was sitting in, so I couldn’t test whether the disappearance of eye contact aversion was true.

But now, thanks to the mother of this other Deaf woman helping me today, I guess I have compelling enough evidence that the disappearance of eye contact aversion when signing is true at least for myself… Which means that, o-ho, a new life opportunity has suddenly appeared before me, hasn’t it!

I don’t necessarily have a good connection to the Deaf community yet, but that community feels closer now than ever before. Regarding the Deaf daughter of the woman I met today, unless I misunderstood, that daughter is “half-American” and uses a mix of both ASL and Norwegian Sign Language. Given I’m also half-American that certainly intrigues me.

  • lilypad [she/her, null/void]@hexbear.netEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    Im so glad youve found the eye contact thing to be true for you!

    probably talking out my ass

    The dialect/variances make sense especially in norwegian, like kjæm, kjærleik, korleis, instead of kommer, kjærlighet, hvordan.

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      Well, what I meant was the letter forms themselves, the handshapes.

      Edit: Or are you trying to say that Nynorsk vs Bokmål having different letter distributions would influence how NTS/NSL letters would develop in Nynorsk vs Bokmål areas? I guess it’s possible, but I was seeing variation between people in Bokmål areas, so I don’t really think that’s it. The NTS/NSL dialects originally corresponded to the different Deaf schools, I understand, so you can’t really pair NTS/NSL dialects one-to-one with Norwegian dialects. They’re different languages with different histories.

      A thing that is interesting to note, however, is that NTS/NSL originally used a two-handed alphabet, but eventually switched to a one-handed alphabet. There is however one letter that one is still required to use both hands for today: Q, which is almost never used in Norwegian. W, X, and Ø also have commonly-used two-handed variants but are just as if not more commonly signed one-handed.