This is an interesting system I discovered a while back. It’s a “phonetic” language for describing the movements of sign languages. When using SLIPA hand/body gestures are transcribed more or less as they are performed, just as is done for sound in most written languages. This can allow people to talk about sign languges over the internet without resorting to video or cumbersome descriptions. As an example the ASL word for “I” would be transcribed as s^t(i)[G], of which a rough translation might be “touch the sternum with your index finger of your primary hand, with the hand shaped such that you are pointing with just the index finger.”

SLIPA is nifty, but not without problems. I think it suffers from the same basic flaws as IPA, namely that it is a means of specifying specific phonemes from an existing set (which may or may not be suited to the language) rather than a way to specify the phonemic distinctions exactly. Nevertheless SLIPA fills a gaping void in the linguist’s tool chest. And until a better system is invented, that makes it darn cool in my book.