All languages evolve, and sign language is no exception. The British Sign Language Corpus Project has collected footage of nearly 250 deaf people across the U.K., revealing lots of changes, especially as the internet has made it easier for hearing-impaired people to sign to more people. For example, the sign for French people is no longer a stereotypical mustache twirl — it’s now made with a sign for rooster, the unofficial symbol of France. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Evolving Sign Language”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
If you’re a regular listener, you’ve heard us talk often about how the English language is evolving all the time.
And sometimes words fall out of favor and they get replaced.
What you might not know is that the same thing happens with sign language.
And in the UK, that’s been demonstrated dramatically by something called the British Sign Language Corpus.
This is a collection of data by researchers who filmed almost 250 deaf people across the UK using sign language.
And Grant, they found some really interesting changes in recent years about the way that they indicate certain terms, particularly those for nationality.
They’ve been replacing some of the signs that are now considered offensive.
For example, it used to be in the UK that to refer to France, you’d mime twirling a mustache, which is kind of stereotypical.
But younger people who sign in the UK now indicate France by making the sign for a rooster’s comb, because a rooster is sort of the unofficial symbol of France.
And the old sign for India was a finger pointing to an imaginary spot in the middle of your forehead.
Now they use a sign that suggests a triangular shape like the subcontinent of India.
It’s fascinating to me because a lot of these changes happened really fast with the advent of the Internet and deaf people being able to see people in other parts of the world.
Because if you’re just signing, then you’re signing to the person who’s right in front of you.
And so these international ways of communicating now are changing the language really quickly.
And it’s changing naturally.
These aren’t changes imposed by some body of experts.
Exactly.
That’s really interesting.
And I guess this happens in all the other sign languages, right?
In the U.S. and wherever.
Yes, I think so.
We know it’s hard to talk about sign language on the air, but if you happen to be bilingual, we’d love to hear about the changes that you’ve noticed in your sign language.
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Thank you.
