• Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    30 days ago

    In Japanese there’s a similar term, しんがたはいえん (shingata-haien) — “new type lung inflammation” — however it seems more common to just call it コロナ (korona).

    In Norwegian Sign Language, Statped provides this diagram for how to sign “COVID-19”

    You don’t need to be a fingerspelling expert to recognize that this sign starts with the letter C for Covid. The second part of the sign is the numeral 19. It feels a bit ironic, though, that the term Statped provides for COVID-19 actually violates COVID-19 mitigation guidelines, since you literally have to touch your nose to pronounce it, according to the diagram.

    I should note, however, that a video I found used a completely different term for the virus, that doesn’t involve touching your face — this alternate name consists of the letter K for korona followed by the sign for virus/infect/epidemic/pandemic. It’s very interesting to me that Norwegian Sign Language apparently doesn’t distinguish viruses from epidemics from pandemics from the act of infecting someone, but I guess that isn’t really a distinction you need to make, is it?

    Edit: I feel a bit silly for not realizing it was just the numeral 19.