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This pair of log pages features updated colored art of a Talita-adapted ASL alphabet that I drew a long time ago while I was originally planning out the plot of this book. If you've been following me for ages you probably recognize it.
Transcript
LOG 6: ASL Alphabet
ASL, or American Sign Language, is a member of the French Sign Language tree that originated in the late United States of America. Although it uses some English loanwords, ASL has a different lexicon and grammar than English, and many anglophone regions like Great Britain and the Socialist Republic of Mars have endemic sign languages that have no mutual intelligibility with ASL. Gillie is fluent in a Jovian ASL dialect which has influence from both bug ferret culture and Língua Gestual Cetásereio, a sign language used for underwater communication by Cetasers, an amphibious clade of GMH. LGC is closely related to Libras, a Brazilian sign language.
Insert panel: Two Cetasers sign to one another underwater. They are humans with short webbed limbs, cetacean-like tails, white and grey skin, and gills on their neck.
A table is shown of the ASL alphabet, with Talita's hand position compared to Gillie's.
A
B
C
Talita: Uh…
Talita creates the C shape with one thumb up, then moves it next to the other thumb to create a symmetrical C shape.
Talita: …Both thumbs??
Gillie smiles and gives her a thumbs up.
D
E
F
Talita switches between a version where she holds two digits up and pinches her other finger and thumb together to form a circle, and one where she touches her thumb to her palm and holds the other 3 digits up.
Talita: Circle or three fingers?
Gillie: (ASL) Circle.
G
H
I
Talita: Very similar to "A."
Gillie: (ASL) Sign "A" open for clarity?
J
K
L
M
Talita's face bristles and she frowns as she looks at her hand attempting the M and N handshapes. A human thumb poking through the curled pinkie and ring finger of the "M" handshape and between the ring and middle finger of the "N" handshape are not something her symmetrical four fingered hand can clearly replicate.
Talita: …These two, are, uh…
Gillie: (ASL) Good enough.
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Talita smiles, making a handshape with 3 digits extended and one thumb curled against her palm.
Talita: Ah, 3 fingers is more important here than in "F."
Gillie nods.
X
Y
Z
"ILY"
"I love you"
Both of them giggle as they sign their versions of the combined I, L, and Y handsign; Gillie with her index, pinkie, and thumb extended, Talita with both thumbs and one finger extended.
51 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 187 and 188”
Lee
This would be SO cute as a poster. I’d love to have this hung up by my desk if you ever decide you make one!
foca
honestly, i think all of the log pages would make for great posters…
Rook
I love science fiction because you can say things like “anglophone regions like Great Britain and the Socialist Republic of Mars”
JoB
Or, if you want to spice it up, have those three adjectives swapped around a bit. 😛
Malex
The description of contemporary America as “the late United States” is somehow both ominous and oddly comforting.
Apollo235
Wait wheres the character Q&A link?
JoB
The RQs following the latest chapter haven’t started yet (they usually follow the “Log”s), and apparently collecting Qs for them hasn’t, either.
The form used at the end of the last chapter seems to still work, though … Jay, is that intentional or … ?
Gar G
Gosh, I remember taking ASL in school (I needed an elective) and this takes me back
Arcstone
aww, wholesome satan horns. 🤟
centaurcirclerationalist
Hee hee hee!
Jack
this has probably been one of my favorite pages to read and reread !! love the log pages a TON and i always look forward to seeing the new ones. btw i think gillie is becoming my favorite character slowly but surely she is just everything to me hehe
Hunter
I love how you frame it as Gillie and Talita going through how Talita can do sign language with her own body and them making observations.
Plus their happy faces at the end x3
Greebus
The differences between standard ASL and Jovian ASL is an interesting peak into Gillie and Talita’s world. It reminds me that the characters are also not actually speaking modern English because this comic takes place 300+ yrs into the future, just that the speech has been translated for legibility. Both of these things are a really nice worldbuilding touch.
Septemberdale
But on the other hand, I hope nobody tries to learn ASL from it, on account of this is really JSL.
Jay Eaton
As it is presented in the book, it’s just modern ASL. Don’t learn ASL from this book anyways, because I am not fluent in ASL and RttS a work of fiction not a learning resource.
Jay Eaton
If there’s differences between this and the ASL you’re familiar with, it’s either errors or our regional difference. The ASL in this book almost entirely modern ASL the same way the character’s dialog is almost entirely modern English.
Greebus
I meant with the finger spelling on this page specifically. Maybe it’s just regional, but I see some differences and I assumed it was because of the webbed hands of the cetasers.
Kishikai
Some overlap between S/0, L/3, Y/9, ILY/11, and very similar for U/11?
Kishikai
U/6*
JoB
Well, since one’d supposedly fingerspell words, the context should help a lot in telling the intended meaning apart. It’s not like human-spelled ABDKLSUVW weren’t similarly close to usual positions in the predominant (unary) human finger-counting system.
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[now ponders a possible ASL equivalent of leetspeak, though. :-3 ]
Redacted
I love the bit about the Cetaser sign language, it reminds of Wings of Fire and how the SeaWings had their own language they spoke with their bioluminescent scales. Those books are like baby’s first spec bio lmao.
Come to think of it the main SeaWing character Tsunami’s arc in her book partially revolved around her disconnection with her home culture, there’s a whole subplot about another character teaching her words in the SeaWing language because she was raised away from her birth kingdom with other types of dragons and only one other SeaWing who didn’t teach her their language.
SheTheTDE
they’re bonding <3 <3 <3
Momo
love things like this!!! too cute at the end as well!!!
Joey
I love how we see her thumb trembling as she tries to sign “C,” it really gives a sense of her range of motion. She can do things with her hands that humans can’t, so it’s easy to get the idea that centaur hands are just uniformly more flexible or don’t have limits.
HAL9000
its interesting the ASL alphabet can be done entirely one handed! BSL (British Sign) standard needs two, though iirc there’s a one-handed version.
i believe ASL in general is more suited to single-handed signing then BSL? though since I speak neither take that with a quarry’s worth of salt
Eaglefairy
The hee hee hees at the end are giving me life. Three cheers for connection!
thegriffin88
Hee, I can spell my name now! Although I don’t know any hearing impaired people I still find it an interesting language. But I think the world could benefit from a more universal one. Maybe global signs for nouns and verbs and adjectives, etc but different finger spelling?
🤟
Anon Y Mouse
there exists international sign pidgin already, though it’s not really a language. it’s quite impossible to make an international language—linguistic drift will happen, for example—and local ASL differences are stronger than local differences in English use.
Lual
Just FYI the term “hearing impaired” is offensive to a lot of deaf people, especially those who are culturally Deaf. Because it usually comes from a medicalist perspective of deafness as something to be fixed- a ‘problem’ or ‘deficiency’.
The terms “deaf”, “Deaf”, and “Hard of Hearing”, are usually more appropriate.
(small capital “deaf” being a general term, and big capital “Deaf” being used for those who are culturally Deaf)
And as the other reply already noted, sign languages arise naturally like spoken languages- so different regions have different languages (and dialects within those) depending on the history and social factors of the area.
Here in Australia where I am our majority sign language(Auslan) has 2 dialects (north and south) but there still tends to be pretty strong differences even between cities in the same dialect area (eg Perth and Melbourne are on opposite sides of the country, so even though they’re linguistically closer than say Brisbane and Perth there’s still a lot of little idiosyncrasies that can trip you up if you’re unaware).
If you want to get into Aboriginal sign languages in Australia there’s hundreds of separate languages, as diverse as the other First Nations languages here.
I highly recommend finding a course in your local sign language if you can! It’s a great experience- good courses also include just as much Deaf history and culture as language learning, which makes it very very interesting. 🙂
JoB
I would guess that having a sign come up in conversation that one doesn’t know is most often more of a stumbling block than an unknown word in speech, isn’t it? Specific (if pretty random) example, the Deaf living in Berlin use a regionally-known sign for the Alexanderplatz. Getting what an “Alexander square” might be is easy enough, but guessing what the sign means is IMHO quite hard even if you know that the square (horizontal left arm) is near the TV tower (vertical right arm, elbow resting on back of left hand) …
Apollo235
So does Talita sign C with both thumbs or just one? the single thumb is more prominent on the page, that’s why I’m confused
MoonyBeasty
I think either or is fine, since both form a “C” shape.
snaps
seems like the more prominent signs are her directly copying gillie, and the smaller illustrations are her adjustments! so im guessing she’ll probably use both thumbs
Jay
Honestly learning more about sign through this series than anything else I’ve ever read or watched… It’s fascinating, and makes me want to pick up sign language myself! I only know a few signs, but that kind of skill is just worth picking up – accessibility helps everyone. Thank you for making Gillie, and making sign seem way more approachable – I’ve already learned a few signs from this comic!!
Lion
LIBRAS MENTIONED
7arty
Huh.
I’ve been making a point not to check the “World” info page, I prefer to immerse myself into the lore through the comic than to wikidive and, “spoil” myself so to say. So, I had been slightly curious as to why ASL in particular, whether Jovian culture was mostly american pioneers or what.
Then page 182 pointing out signers where quite rare, I just figured sign languages in general were dying out and ASL was just easier to research, learn and teach to Gillie for her parents (the internet already does a terrible job of documenting things outside the american side of the anglosphere, let alone the anglosphere in general, now imagine what decades of link rot would do).
But now, LGC? Now that makes things interesting, as I figure a relatively modern sign language like that has to have (or at least recently had) a reason to be thriving – facilitating subaquatic communication maybe? Now I’ve gotta go back and read the log that covered GMH, see if it had anything to say about that. It also makes me wonder what’s stopping it from having a more direct influence over more isolated signers, that (presumably) dying sign languages do still stick around…
And now I find myself hoping we do get to see more about cetasian life and culture in the future.
Stray Cat
This is a small thing, but I appreciate the mention of other sign languages besides ASL! (Which I think is something that even a lot of people outside the US don’t know about.) I know a few signs in my own country’s sign language – not many, but enough to confirm that yeah, it’s a very different beast to ASL.
Also I love the idea of Cetasers using their own sign language for underwater communication. It just makes sense for a bunch of reasons. And the fact that Gillie specifically uses a dialect that has some influence from bug ferret culture – again, that also makes sense for a bunch of reasons.
JoB
> It just makes sense for a bunch of reasons.
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Like the missing requirement to keep your other limbs uselessly out of the conversation (and firmly planted on the ground instead).
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(Assuming a manageable level of currents, of course.)
Marcie
I also imagine that some signs don’t work if you have webbed fingers
JoB
> A human thumb poking through the curled pinkie and ring finger of the “M” handshape
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… apparently needs longer thumbs than mine?? :'(
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> Gillie with her index, pinkie, and thumb extended
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The metal fandom here uses that plenty, and calls it the “Pommesgabel” …
(Yes, that one too, not just the thumbless one.)
glazeliights
> “pommesgabel”
which is kind of a funny name in general, considering people usually eat fries with their hands, not with a fork
JoB
… muh? *I* might do that, but I’m unusual (for a German) in that I prefer my fries “dry” (keep ’em a side dish away from whatever saucy stuff and make ’em crunchy to boot, please) and even that gets the remaining deep-frying fat on my fingers …
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(More German vocabulary: “Pommes Schranke” = “french fries, (railway) crossing boom (style)” = with red ketchup and white mayo)
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(Yes, our mayo is usually white, not yellow. A no-go for our French neighbors IIUC …)
Teod
No clickable “full size” link? Sure, we can right click and “open image”, but it was a nice thing to have.
Also, love the sneaky chapter continuation.
Jay Eaton
Fixed.
Vinemaple
“Oh, it’s just a log page,” I told myself. “I mustn’t get excited about plot advancement, I’ll just be disappointed. I should be looking forward to learning more lore,” I told myself.
Thank you for this chart, Jay. Just last night I was watching a Deaf YouTuber and thinking about how, since college, I’ve wanted to stop being part of the problem for Deaf people, but haven’t made any effort to learn ASL because it’s not right in front of my face all the time, but I made time to teach myself pidgin Spanish for my volunteering work. It’s a language, I ought to be able to pick up a few useful words just like any other.
By the way, one useful phrase to learn in any language is “how do you say ______?”
Lecture Spoon
Huh. The Z is slightly different. In the dialect of ASL that I’m familiar with, it’s just a pointer finger doing the drawing.
And now that I’m paying closer attention, the H is also different. Are the Z and H taken from Libras? (The G is also a bit different, but that’s more orientation than shape and might just be a perspective thing)
Anon Y Mouse
yeah, i assume the differences between gallaudet-style ASL and jovian-style ASL are intentional. that makes sense to me.
Jay Eaton
The H and G are the same as I was taught. The veiwing angle is not straight-on because it makes the thumb position difficult to see. I’m not sure why I drew the thumb so far out on Gillie’s Z, I have seen people not curl it when fingerspelling quickly but in this context I think it qualifies as an error.
Anon Y Mouse
oh cool! never seen that variation of h before 🙂
Adrienne
I think my favorite part of trying to follow along with this page is thinking “Oh I don’t know how to make my hand do that” and then realizing I obviously shouldn’t know because I’m trying to copy Talita’s hand instead of Gillie’s 🤪
Matt
I really like that this log is basically a continuation of the end of last chapter! Very smooth!