in studying American Sign Language
you have to realize that ASL does not exist alone
in fact there are whole families of sign languages
the british empire spread all over the world and as a result it brought British
sign language to various places these places as diverses Australia India and
the United States for a time shared certain features of sign language
even today Australian sign language Indian sign language and british sign
language bear a huge similarity in fact mostly was considered AUSLAN- Australian
sign language to be a dialect of dsl or British sign language because the two
languages are so similar
Now ASL has a different story in the monasteries of Spain
the monks who took vows of silence developed a way of communicating one
another using a system of signs as a result some of them taught deaf children
to read and write and of course their catechism in sign language
one of these types of monastic sign traveled to France and eventually
was used in school for the deaf in Paris France
that's where Laurent Clerc came from to come to the United States with
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet to teach sign language
Gallaudet a hearing person didn't know sign went in search of a teacher of
sign and found Laurent Clerc a deaf person and brought him to the US
and thus French sign language spread in the US at the original School for the
Deaf the American asylum for deaf mutes there were already some older signs in
here in the the colonies in the states at the time again so that
probably had some influence from British sign language as well as perhaps some
signs that are particular to the United States but by and large it was the
french system of signs that came down to us even today
ASL bears more in common with Mexican sign language and Russian sign language
than it does with British sign language in fact it has a great deal
more grammatical and lexical similarities to these sign languages
that came from old french and it does to the signs that came from a British sign
language in Asia- Japan in the Japanese system of educating the death
had a huge influence so old Japanese sign language spread to japan to taiwan to
parts of Southeast Asia and had a big influence
sometimes the sign systems from the colonial powers in Europe came and
merged with Japanese science systems to form various families
plus we need to be careful when talking about sign language because there are
really various sign languages and sometimes the way that we speak
creates confusion we say things like Spanish sign language well that only
means the sign language used in Spain
that doesn't mean the sign language used in Puerto Rico which is ASL or the sign
language used in Colombia which is colombian sign or the sign language used in
Mexico which is the LSM Mexican sign language so you have to be really careful
about the way that we use these terms because it doesn't recognize that these
are different languages with different signs and different grammatical
structures that
said there is a form of signing that is widely used throughout the world called
international sign now international sign does not replace the sign language
of each individual country but at large deaf events such as the World Federation
of the Deaf conventions various stuff sporting events such as Deafolympics
international scientists use as a sort of lingua franca common shared
language
now i use that term language with scare quotes because it's debatable whether or
not
International Sign deserves the title of language
it's certainly something that's language like there are a small number of signs
that are used repeatedly that everyone understands that uses International Sign
understands their grammatical features such as the various types of directional
verbs and classifiers that get used
there are common grammatical forms such as use of token space use of surrogacy
direct dialogue that that make international sign quite easy for many
many users to understand that said International Sign relies heavily on ASL
because lots of deaf people go to Gallaudet and learn ASL it relies heavily on
English lots of the mouth movements you'll see in international sign based
on english words and and apart from english and ASL relies heavily on
European influences so you'll see signs that relate to European signs for
things
a signer from Africa would have a much harder time understanding international
sign
a signer from Asia will likewise have a lot more trouble because the signs are
based around french-based european-based signs not based around Japanese
influence asian-influenced signs as a result we need to be careful about thinking of
International signs sas just this system of signs that everyone understands
I think of it more as a lingua franca used primarily with those people who are
- who are familiar with European issues and European deaf communities