(A student asks...)
Question:
How do you sign "Samhainophobia?"
Answer:
The word Samhainophobia is just a couple of words mashed together:
1. Samhain
and
2. Phobia
According to Wikipedia:
"Samhain is a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the
beginning of winter or the "darker half" of the year. Traditionally, it is
celebrated from 31 October to 1 November, as the Celtic day began and ended at
sunset."
(Or what most of us refer to as: Halloween!)
According to Oxford:
A "phobia" is "an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something."
So all English has done is taken two different words and strung them together
into one big word by getting rid of the space and replacing the space with the
letter "o."
(Samhain + o + phobia) = (Halloween + fear)
Let us allow ASL the same privilege.
We can use two signs to represent the meaning of "Samhainophobia."
1. Fear: https://youtu.be/OMEUC9FKU_k
2. Halloween:
https://youtu.be/etaFxJRJxhc
Thus go ahead and sign "fear" + "Halloween"
and consider it the equivalent of "Samhainophobia."
Remember also that you can't casually toss "Samhainophobia" into conversation in
English.
The vast majority of English speakers have no clue whatsoever what
"Samhainophobia" means without first having it explained to them.
Let us accord (give) ASL signers the same rights to expect context and or an
explanation prior to being expected to magically understand that we are signing
"fear" + "Halloween" to mean "a clinically diagnosed phobia" rather than just
using it to mean "Halloween is scary."
I'm going to state that again:
English speakers don't magically understand big words out of context -- don't go
expecting ASL signers to do so either.
Notes:
* If three years later, (after having explained the meaning of
Samhainophobia) you ask English speakers again what is the big word for "a
clinical fear of Halloween -- most will likely have forgotten the word
"Samhainophobia" or at least the specific spelling. They will know it is a
phobia (because "phobia" is a relatively common term) but the "Samhain" part
will typically be forgotten from disuse.
*
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