Talk:New Zealand Sign Language

message: I have a question: this article says New Zealand English is the official language of New Zealand. To me that implies that the particular form of English as spoken in NZ is the official language of New Zealand instead of just English, and furthermore that New Zealand English vastly differs from "standard" English (therefore the neccessity to specify that NZ English is an official language). 
To put it differently, the article reads like as if NZ English is so different from English as, for example, Swiss German from standard German, and that this supposedly very different form of English is the official language (among others) of NZ. I know the former is not the case, but what about the latter. Is really the NZ English recognised as one official language, or is rather just English? I mean in Canada, English is recognised as one official language, not Canadian English. (I hope I made myself clear) Blur4760 17:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We have our own weird usages of words and pronounciation (we tend to be pretty bad on this).  But it does not differ that much, less than American English to UK English. --Midnighttonight 21:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: English is only a de facto official language of New Zealand. For a long time Maori was the only "official" language. However, the statute that made Maori an official language was in English, but because of the dominance of English, nobody has ever bothered to sanction English as an official language. --Limegreen 02:44, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be hard to claim that English is not an official language of New Zealand since almost all our official documents are written in English! Ben Arnold 03:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It would be easy enough to make an argument that NZSL is more official than English! After all, NZSL only requires royal assent. You will find far less in the way of documentation to make English official. However, just because it isn't officially sanctioned, doesn't mean that it has no status.--Limegreen 04:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Zealand English 

message: As of my writing, most of the article deals with NZSL's status as an official language of NZ. What is the precedence for this? Are there other countries with a nonverbal/sign languages as an official language? Also, what does it mean for a language to be an offical language in NZ? Is there any practical implications? -- 20:07, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure but I think it is the first.  It gives significant access in dealing with the government, Parliament must now have a translator avialable for instance.  But Sign Language was treated as a de facto official language until now really. --Midnighttonight 21:08, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  First Official Sign Language? 

message: I've taken out references to it being official, since the article says it hasn't received royal assent. 202.175.143.143 00:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not official 

message: You've edited the NZSL article claiming that NZSL is now an official language of New Zealand. From what I can gather about the royal assent process this seems highly unlikely. If you have evidence that royal assent has already been given to the New Zealand Sign Language Bill could you please point me to it?
Just some background. The bill doesn't become law in New Zealand until the Governor-General signs it (known as royal assent). Furthermore this particular bill contains a section stating the it doesn't come into effect until the day after royal assent. From what I can gather about royal assent, it looks like it generally happens on a Monday or Thursday. Also it may be that it only occurs when Parliament's sitting. Parliament is taking a break for Easter now, so we may be waiting until 2 May for NZSL to become an official language.
Ben Arnold 02:08, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My bad.  I thought something was fishy, but decided to update the article to what I thought was true at the time.  On the front page, it said that it had just been made the official language - nothing about waiting for royal assent.  I read through the article, but it referred to the royal assent as a "constitutional formality", which may be sort of degrading to its legal importance.  Anyways, after reading that, I figured it was not a legal process anymore, just something for show.  But I guess I trust Wikipedia's front page, so I updated it.  Guess I should've dont more research.  Thanks, zappa 22:50, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: From [[User talk:Zappa.jake|zappa's talk page]]

message: I don't think the heading 'Dialects' is appropriate. There is no (socio)linguistic research that supports the idea of NZSL having dialects in the sense that other 'standard' languages are said to have dialects.
Yes, there is certainly language variation -- for example the concept of 'people', as in a group of individuals, can be represnted by at least 2 lexemes but there is no research yet to show how, when or why either is used or not used. There is little research to account for the factors that influence this sociolinguistic variation -- factors such as age, areas lived in + school attended (regional variables), age NZSL learnt (native signer, non-native, etc). A 3 year project is currently under way at the Deaf Studies Research Unit, Victoria University of Wellington, (www.vuw.ac.nz) that is looking in to sociolinguistic variation.
NZSL users anecdotally discuss the variation they see (and there seems to be a lot of it), and there is an acceptance of the amount of variety in NZSL by its users (though predictable less so by some learners!). But to imply that the known variation due to school indicates dialects within NZSL is not accurate.
The title is misleading and should be changed.
Aleniboy 15:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The paragraph titled "Dialects" 

message: Tariana Turia's speech when the NZSL bill came up for its second reading  stresses the need for translators between the/te reo Māori language and NZSL. It would be interesting to read something about the unique challenges of learning/using NZSL when your first language isn't English. I'm guessing that NZSL, being partly based on BSL, uses the mouthing of English words along with some signs, to differentiate 'language', say, from 'linguistics'.
Would anyone be able to write on this topic? I am neither a sign language user, nor a New Zealander, let alone a NZSL user and Maori, so I don't know if it is a significant issue for Maori NZSL users. Justinep 15:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trilingual translation 

message: If anyone knows how to enter citations (I can't work it out), this is the citation/reference for the statistical info comparing NZSL to BSL and ASL mentioned in the second paragraph of the artice. Incidentally, if you do a search for "62.5% NZSL BSL" on Google Books Search, you will see a scanned copy of the relevant book and article.
McKee, D. and G. Kennedy. 2000. "Lexical Comparisons of Signs from American, Australian, British, and New Zealand Sign Languages" In K. Emmorey & H. Lane (eds) The Signs of Language Revisited: An Anthology to Honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima , New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Aleniboy (talk) 21:54, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Aleniboy, all you need to do is enclose your reference in  and  tags.  Thx for doing the hard work! ;-) yoyo (talk) 18:52, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation on NZSL-BSL-ASL comparisons for someone to enter 

message: Given this page is linked to the WikiProject Deaf, you may be interested to know that there is a proposed project there to have a standardised format for describing sign languages. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deaf and go to "Projects". To view the draft template, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Languages/Template_(sign_language). The proposed template is in my view a good one and would help tidy this page up and allow for more language/linguistics orientated descriptions Aleniboy (talk) 14:41, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed standardised format for pages describing sign languages 

message: This reference Lopdell Gallery implies the Titirangi School for the Deaf listed is now a gallery ...I'm not even sure about St Dominic's (there's a St Joseph's now at 1--Billymac00 (talk) 22:41, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  School for deaf no longer? 

message: "...with no linguistic connection to a spoken or written language..."
"Christchurch - 2 Cs, represents ChCh."
The latter phrase would appear to contradict the former. Tsuguya (talk) 08:37, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Strictly speaking, you're right. It's a pretty rare example, and to say that it proved the rule wrong would be like saying that the word "orangutan" is a linguistic connection between English and Indonesian.--Hugh7 (talk) 01:12, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Contradiction

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thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018)