Makaton - I Need Help From a User Please :-)

Chell

nikiyoung wrote: »

Hi to all needing hep from a Makaton user.
I work at a Pre-school and we have been signing a diamond shape out of our hands (holding thums and next finger together to make a diamond shape), someone has said that this is a "rude" gesture in makaton but as we do not use Makaton at our Pre-school we don't know if this is correct or not. Please can you put our minds at rest that we are not being rude or if we are we will stop doing it immediately!
sory to ramble on
Niki

I've just found an article which mebntions this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/oct/10/sign-language-variation

'There's another story about the rude signed version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. At some baby signing classes recently, teachers who were not very skilled in BSL made up a sign for the word "diamond" which looked a lot like the BSL for vagina. So they wound up signing not "Like a diamond in the sky", but "Like a vagina in the sky".'

shirlgirl2004

That's the problem when people that aren't trained in BSL or Makaton decide to teach signing. We just use the BSL sign of flicking the ring finger (as in diamond ring). You've got to :rotfl: