"refugee"

While reading I often encounter a word I do not know so I look it up. At one time I had hundreds of index cards for words in English, now my laptop computer file has only 1,130 word files (I just now looked and checked.) Most of those words come from Professorial legal types and are hardly useful in conversational English. But I do not know what became of the previous index cards, they did not survive five moves.

Presently I have thousands of Egyptian hieroglyphic index cards in hard files and thousands more on my computer most of them uploaded online. I had a terrible time finding a site with a decent search feature, Blogger didn't cut it for that specific task.. Blogger does not go back to the beginning for some reason. (Although it does for the owner's post page, useful to myself but not others)  I had all my hand drawn cards uploaded as a phrase finder on a site that I paid for but the site raised their prices astronomically and unacceptably and now that add on feature does not work, although the rest of the site does. What a bummer. I poured a lot of energy into that phrase finder. It was a useful tool. Maybe I'll persist with Blogger and upload my scanned cards there. I do not understand why Bloggers search works so well for my other sites but not so well for the Gardiner's sign list. I keep hoping that will self remedy.

Today I was reading in English but processing in ASL when I came upon the word "refugee" and realized I do not know that sign. I checked five separate online dictionaries to no avail. Here is what came up on Spread the Sign.

As you know, the word refugee implies escape from something, some danger, usually political. Immigrate suggest simply moving. Migrant suggests returning, a back and forth. We can expect those distinctions to be clear in any sign in any language.

U.S. refugee 1
person
escape
mental disturbance (vaguely one version of "immigrant"
there conflict
challenges, attacks
foreign country
happen
blow it off, give up, I've had it.

Come on. She signs the definition of the word, not the word itself. Cannot the U.S. of A do better than this? 

In downloading the file I notice two video files are present but only one displaying. One must be backup or something. Or two people responded for American sign and they chose hers to display. Here is the other.

U.S refugee 2

stashing, raking, person, person, person

That's better. But oddly, he is using the European personification, not the US personification, the "er" suffix that conveys the trunk of the body not the two handed karate chop that conveys that same thing two handedly. He does three of them as to suggest three refugees. The crooked "V" clawing at the side of the palm of the hand is the configuration for "grabbing," "itching" "annoyance" and such. Here it looks like "crawling under" "person" "person" "person."  It looks unAmerican to me. I can see why it is a secondary file.

Most of the counties on Spread the Sign use an index finger jabbing underneath a flat palm. This is the American word for "kill" or "murder" but not for "dead."

Either with the palm flat as if "go" "underground" or sideways as "go" "along a wall"

Most European signers do not use an index finger, instead a palm sliding under another palm as to suggest "go underground." 

The American word for "migrant" is a sideways "W" pulled across the face with fingers trailing. It can mean "immigrant." 

In reverse, a "W" crossing the face in the opposite direction and with fingers leading, means "weird," especially when the fingers are wiggling. The weirder the thing then the weirder the fingers are wiggled and the weirder the facial expression. The word for "strange" is a "C" that bends downward while crossing the face so sometimes the wiggling "W" for weird  then weirdly bends downward like the "C" for "strange."  The "C" across the face for "strange" is similar to the word for "search" depending on the signer and on the context. 

Here are three pages of nearly thirty videos clips depicting the word "refugee" in various sign languages in differing European countries. All of the video clips are from Spread the Sign. So here I am spreading them. Click "older post" on the bottom of the page if you care to view them all.