If someone uses American Sign Language, can they fully communicate with someone in Bolivia? Or France? Or even England? No! In fact, ASL derives from the French system in use in the early 19th century, and they’re still 60% similar. British Sign Language, which arose independently, would be mostly unintelligible to an American signer. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Sign Languages Differ Just as Spoken Languages Do”
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.
Grant, you might think that if I used American Sign Language, then I could communicate easily with, say, a deaf person in Bolivia who uses sign language.
But that’s not true. As you know, the signs aren’t universal by any means.
And in fact, if I used American Sign Language and you used British Sign Language, we still wouldn’t be able to communicate because those systems are completely different.
American Sign Language is based on the French system that was imported to this country in the early 19th century by Thomas Gallaudet, who recruited a top sign language teacher in his day, a guy named Clerc, who happened to be based in Paris.
ASL, or American Sign Language, is almost 60% the same as French Sign Language, and it’s unintelligible to users of British Sign Language.
This was news to me.
That’s very interesting, right?
Yeah.
And the British, does they have a homegrown system, or does it come from somewhere else?
They have a homegrown system, and what happened was that there was a great critical mass of deaf people in France.
It’s a smaller country, and Paris was, of course, a great population center.
Deaf people in this country were more spread out.
And so they had a long time of developing their sign language system before we ever got around to it.
That’s really interesting stuff.
Yeah.
It’s important to say that when we talk about sign language, it’s just not another language transposed.
Right.
American Sign Language, and you’ve just kind of pointed this out, but I want to say this a different way.
American Sign Language isn’t American English in hand symbols.
It is its own language with its own grammar and its own syntax and its own vocabulary.
Exactly.
Yeah, it’s not word for word, so we can’t use the same words and communicate with the British that way.
I’d love to hear from you.
Do you sign?
Do you sign in more than one variety of sign language?
Let us know, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.
