Somewhere I read that ASL (American Sign Language) is the third most used “language” in the US (behind English and Spanish). A great trivia question if it’s true.
I was surprised to find that there are so many sign languages (primarily for the deaf) worldwide, and while ASL dominates the English-speaking areas of North America - the Brits use a completely different system - unintelligible to an ASL “speaker”. On the other hand - South Africa (with 11 official languages) has one sign language - understood by all.
How do the deaf manage to communicate with (deaf) foreigners? In writing (if both parties can understand the language)? It seems so logical to have one (or very few) sign languages recognized/used worldwide - considering the relatively few people that use them.
From that point of view it seems equally logical to have one spoken language in use worldwide, but we don’t.
One reason is than that languages develop separately and organically, and sign languages are no exception. When, e.g., Irish Sign Language was being developed ease of communication with deaf people in Germany or Poland was not a priority, so it wasn’t something that shaped ISL.
Another is that sign languages usually refer to some extent to a spoken language - there are signs for a lot of concepts in ASL, but not signs for every possible concept, and sometimes things are just spelled out, in which case you need to spell them out in a language which your interlocutor understands.
There is an international sign language (called, unsurprisingly, International Sign) which is used at international gatherings, conventions, etc, but it’s fairly basic and simplified, and there’s a limited amount of information you can communicate with it.
With an interpreter who knows both signed languages. Or with two interpreters who each know one of the signed languages, but both share a spoken language. Or with writing, frantic gestures, and–yes–memes.
ASL (American) and BSL (British) are only about 40% cognate. Depending on region, ASL and LSF (French) can be more than 60% cognate.
International Sign is not especially standardized, and it’s not even a full language. While it might be nice to have one, it’s not there yet, so most Deaf people don’t bother with it.
There is a less abstract component to sign language that people can use to communicate with other signers (whenever the two signers are not familiar with each others’ particular sign language). This level of gesturing can often be enough to communicate clear and definite ideas/desire.
****orcenio *not a deaf signer, just an ASL student of 4 years. Take this as opinion/observation not fact
There are somewhat more than a hundred deaf sign languages in the world. They were mostly developed in the past several centuries. It’s hard to tell though, since there’s not a very good record of them before that time. One important thing to remember is that the deaf language used in a particular region has no necessary relationship to the spoken language used there. The most obvious case of this is that American Sign Language and British Sign Language are mostly unintelligible to each other, not dialects of a single sign language. In fact, American Sign Language is closer to French Sign Language, since it was developed by people who knew French Sign Language. Furthermore, in many cases a region with many different spoken languages has just one deaf sign language.
Essentially, when a deaf person wants to communicate with someone outside of the region where their deaf sign language is used, they need to learn to read and write one of the spoken languages. Yes, it’s a second language to them. This makes it sound to some of us (like, for instance, most Americans) like this must be really difficult. Remember though that more than half of the people in the world are fluent in at least two languages. It’s not really that difficult. Still, it does take work, and the average deaf American reads at a sixth-grade level. Still, there are lots of deaf people who graduate from college. In fact, there’s an entire university (Gallaudet) just for deaf students.
A univocal gesture, or even a collection of univocal gestures, is not a language. And, even if it were, there is no particular reason to single out obscene gestures as constituting a language. And gestures and their meanings vary internationally like spoken languages and sign languages do.
My nephew has two handicapped children and the whole family is learning Makaton. This is a simplified sign language specially developed for children with learning difficulties who would not necessarily have the intellectual capacity or the manual dexterity to manage a full sign language.
This does not seem to have caught on in the USA (maybe an NIH) which is a shame as the youngest, who does not speak and had serious temper issues, is, now that he can communicate, much happier.
I suspect that another influence on sign languages for the deaf was monastic sign languages. Many monasteries have a rule of silence, with vocal speech permitted only in worship, or as otherwise authorized by the leader of the monastery. But humans are social creatures, and so they spontaneously develop sign languages in which to communicate instead.
But these are typically specific to the individual monasteries, and another monastery, even of the same order, will use a completely different language.
I asked the resident ASL interpreter, and she says, “They’ll figure it out. Deaf people can pick up on a signed language really fast–much faster than hearing people can pick up a spoken language. They’re really good at understanding each other, even if they don’t share a common spoken language.”
Hmm…this has a whiff of “noble savage” reductiveness to it.
Did your resident ASL interpreter really mean that “deaf people pick up new languages faster than hearing people?” Or did the interpreter actually mean something like “signed western languages tend to share more cognates than you’d expect, so it’s not much of a reach to mutual intelligibility?”
It’s not true that French speakers can somehow “pick up on spoken languages much faster than Mandarin speakers”. But most native French speakers will pick up Spanish, Italian and other Romance languages faster than most native Mandarin speakers simply because there’s a lot of overlap (vocabulary, grammar and syntax) between French and Spanish.
I don’t mean to be coy about this. Her statement implies one of two things, and both are a little squicky:
There’s something about being deaf that makes it easy to pick up any signed language. This seems weirdly patronizing. Also, there are a huge variety of reasons people can’t hear—why would all of them somehow enhance the same aspect of language processing?
Signed languages are easier to learn than spoken ones, which suggests that signed languages somehow aren’t “full” languages or are simpler and less shaded with meaning than spoken languages.
These are both longstanding tropes about deaf people (AIUI). I’m surprised an ASL interpreter would perpetuate them, even inadvertently. But I’m not deaf and I don’t pretend to know much about ASL or deaf culture; maybe I’m mistaken.
You’re mistaken. None of that was implied. There’s nothing about being deaf (small d) that makes signed languages any easier to learn, and ASL is a full language, every bit as complex as English or Basque. Nobody’s claimed otherwise.
But being Deaf (capital D) means that you’re part of a community that uses at least one signed language, so there is familiarity. A marginalized community that has historically struggled with understanding others and being understood, so there is motivation. Also, ASL changes depending on region and current trends, so the signs you learn at 15 may not be the ones you use at 20 or 25, so there is necessity.
Hearing people could probably learn the signed languages just as easily, but they usually lack the familiarity, the motivation, or the necessity. They have their hearing to fall back on if they get stuck. Deaf people don’t.
I’m confident that you are reading too much into her words with those implications. Deaf singers are both excellent at communicating **and **sign languages are languages (by any definition of the word).
Here’s a question. When playing charades, have you ever noticed that some people are better at communicating, describing, and expressing ideas than others? These people are better because they have practiced non-verbal communication. Deaf signers are often masters at all forms of non-verbal communication (out of necessity). Hearing people often neglect learning these forms of communication in favour of solely using speaking/reading. We are different only because our lives are different.
Two mutually intelligible deaf signers would probably be able to communicate with each other for the simple fact that both would be more observant and more expressive than a hearing person. If they are congenitally/profoundly deaf and learned sign language at a young age, they would probably be excellently trained in objectively describing ideas, objects, people, places, relations between arguments, etc… Signers are not limited to only using their language’s sign (for each word/idea/concept).
ETA: Yeah, basically what **GreysonCarlisle **said.
Oh, it was absolutely implied, even if the implication wasn’t intentional. That’s why I asked for clarification. When you shrugged and said I should interpret her statement as I saw fit, thought I should clarify why I was asking.
I don’t believe those things to be true, and it sounds like you’re saying the interpreter didn’t mean to imply them. I accept that.
Again, I know these things to be true, and I believe the ASL interpreter we’re discussing knows them too. I’ve never questioned whether signed languages are full languages; I was just surprised that an ASL interpreter would imply that they weren’t. Greyson Carlisle is saying that the implication was coincidental, not intentional, and I buy that explanation.
I gather you participate in Deaf culture yourself…I really appreciate your input in this thread.
This is coming from just a few classes in ASL - People signing use their facial expression, direction of attention, body language, and outright miming as part of their language. Saying “X happened and it made me happy” with a blank face, for example, is ungrammatical. To the extent that these things are universal, they represent a shared sub or meta vocabulary.
During the class, I became fatigued just from the visual focus that attending to someone signing requires. I would surmise that having that focus well developed would make unfamiliar signs a bit easier to interpret from context. Just at a guess.