Sign language! It the universal language. A lot of people don't know that sign
language isn't universal. Say what? Are you kidding me?
In fact there's somewhere between 138 to 300 different types of sign languages
used around the world. Today my hope is that I can bring some awareness to this fact
and show you some of the differences between all of those sign languages.
Isn't it interesting the similarities yet differences between these sign languages
and here's another word. Mother in ASL, this is the sign for mother in British sign language.
This is the sign for mother now in Indian sign language. This is the sign for mother but in
French sign language. This is how you sign mother. As I mentioned before there are so many different
versions of sign language. I know American Sign Language. ASL is actually the seventh most popular
sign language in the world starting at number one on the list is Indian sign language with six
million three hundred thousand users. Indonesian sign language has just under a million at nine
hundred thousand. Russian sign language has seven hundred and fifteen thousand users. There are six
hundred thousand users of Brazilian sign language. Spanish sign language has around 523,000 users.
Egyptian sign language just under 500,000 users at 475. And finally American sign language has
460,000 users. Even American sign language itself is used around the globe. For instance we have had
comments from people that watch our American sign language channel from many different countries.
Daniela, a preschool teacher in Costa Rica, is learning ASL herself. In fact more than 30% of
our channel views come from outside the United states. How crazy is that!? Crazy!
There are multiple sign language families and clusters used around the world. For instance a lot
of sign languages are derivatives of Rrench sign language. To name a few Italian sign language,
Quebec sign language, American sign language, Irish sign language, Russian sign language,
Spanish sign language, Mexican sign language, Brazilian sign language and many more are all
derived from French sign language. There are so many sign language families like Danish,
Swedish, German, Arab and Japanese. To say the least there are a lot of different types of sign
languages used everywhere. It's important to note that although they are similar each one of
these versions of sign language are their very own independent language with very different
parameters of sign. To exemplify this we recently talked to some friends of ours over the pond in
Great Britain who were kind enough to work with us in showing us how different ASL and BSL are.
A B C D E F G 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Goodnight
How are you? Repeat or again
Learn for learning
I thoroughly hope you enjoyed learning about BSL as much as I did.
I personally had so much fun researching this for you. I found it fascinating that there are
so many different sign languages and there are so many similarities and differences.
I actually had to rein myself back from researching all the different types of sign
language. If you found this video interesting and want to learn about American sign language
be sure to subscribe to our channel so you can learn everything ASL.