My daughter is in Grade 1, French Immersion. Neither her father nor I speak French. Last year in Kindergarten, she learned to sing our national anthem in French, with accompanying sign language.
She has a different teacher this year, who does not know the sign language. My daughter wants to remember the song, but has forgotten some parts.
The French lyrics are not a direct translation of the English lyrics to O Canada. I have tried googling and YouTube, but cannot find a video of anyone demonstrating “French” sign language for the anthem.
Any thoughts/ideas? Her Kindergarten teacher is on maternity leave, so I can’t ask her. My daughter loved “performing” the anthem this way, but over the summer, being just 5 years old, parts have slipped her mind.
A sign language is its own language; sign languages aren’t directly dependent on spoken languages. French Sign Language is the sign language used in France; it’s not signing the French language, and is not particularly joined to the French language (however, there is such a thing as “Signed French”, but it’s very uncommon). French Sign Language is not commonly used in Canada, even amongst French-speakers. There is a Quebec Sign Language, but it doesn’t follow that “O Canada” in French would necessarily be accompanied by QSL, especially if you’re not in Quebec. But I suppose it probably would. The rest of Canada uses ASL. You can translate French to ASL just as easily as QSL – indeed, you can translate any language to ASL.
In short, what you (probably) want is the Quebec Sign Language translation of the French version of the national anthem. But, because the English and French versions aren’t exactly the same, it is just as valid to translate either the English or French version into either American Sign Language or Quebec Sign Language.
American Sign Language is very closely related to French Sign Language, as when Gallaudet tried to get a sign language institution set up in the US, people running British Sign Language schools wanted money to teach it to him, while LeClerc was willing to do so for free.
Certainly not, as they are the original lyrics. (Of course, the English lyrics are also not a direct translation of the French lyrics.)
I think gatorslap has the best answer. It’s hard to know what sign language your daughter learned O Canada in, and I suspect even her kindergarten teacher might not know, although it’s likely to be either American Sign Language or Quebec Sign Language. Both of them are related to, although different from, French Sign Language, but not being familiar with deaf culture I cannot say more.
I know just enough sign language - and the other video by the YouTube poster perkins1441 confirms - that that interpretation is based on the English version. The themes being expressed are very clearly the same ones as in the English version of O Canada.
