In Mandarin, for example, in order to write a slang word, you would combine two dictionary-existing characters (Chinese written characters, also known as "Han zi") to make a slang word.
The way I see it, although the slang word is an addition to the known vocabulary, it is still made up of known Chinese characters.
However, based on what your saying, using sign language, in order to learn the slang word equivalent to a known word, you have to learn a whole new sign?
Interesting... so, in Mandarin, there are no neologisms (newly-created words that represent cultural zeitgeists) in terms of slang creation??
And... yes! For slang to be interpreted into ASL, the sign is, for lack of a better word, novel and unrelated (in form) to English.
Moreover, some ASL slang signs are based on English (ie TRIPPIN, "BLOW-OUTTA-THE-WATER")...
While others are unique slang to ASL/Deaf community:
Examples:
CHAMP (meaning: the absolute best of something)
"TRAIN-GO-SORRY" (technically an idiom; meaning: You missed an opportunity)
"FISH-YOU-SWALLOW" (another idiom, but serves the purpose; meaning: You're gullible)
🤙
There are, but new characters are not introduced into the language to represent them. Since there are over 10,000 characters in use (over 30,000 in total), old characters are chosen to represent the writing of new slang.
So, as the language grows with new words, the writing of these new words uses old known characters, no new characters are ever introduced.
For example:
"No way" is represented by "没门", two known characters, pronounced "mei men", that mean "not/no" and "door/entrance/gate" respectively.
This is so interesting! My uncle is fluent in Mandarin (he lived in China for a few years) but we've never had linguistic talks about the structure of the language.
I used Mandarin as the example because it is the closest language I know to sign language: They both use "symbols" to represent words.
