Sign Language

Sign language is a language which uses manual communication instead of sound to convey meaning - simultaneously combining handshapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's thoughts. Sign languages develop in deaf communities, which can include interpreters and friends and families of deaf people as well as people who are deaf or hearing-impaired themselves.

When people using different signed languages meet communication is significantly easier than when people of different spoken languages meet. Sign language in this respect gives access to an international deaf community.

However, contrary to popular belief, sign language is not universal. Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages develop, but as with spoken languages, these vary from region to region. They are not based on the spoken language in the country of origin; in fact their complex spatial grammars are markedly different. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world and are at the core of local Deaf cultures . Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all.

Sign Language is a complex visual-spatial language that is used by deaf people.
It is a linguistically complete, natural language.
It is the native language of many deaf men and women, as well as some hearing children born into deaf families.

American Sign Language (ASL) shares no grammatical similarities to English and should not be considered in any way to be a broken, mimed, or gestural form of English. In terms of syntax, for example, ASL has a topic-comment syntax, while English uses Subject-Object-Verb. In fact, in terms of syntax, ASL shares more with spoken Japanese than it does with English.

Some people have described sign languages as "gestural" languages.
This is not absolutely correct because hand gestures are only one component of sign language.
Facial features such as eyebrow motion and lip-mouth movements are also significant in sign language as they form a crucial part of the grammatical system.
In addition, sign language makes use of the space surrounding the signer to describe places and persons that are not present.

Sign languages develop specific to their communities and is not universal.
For example, American Sign Language is totally different from British Sign Language even though both countries speak English.
Many people consider it a shame that there isn't a universal sign language, but there isn't a universal spoken language either?

American Sign Language shares many vocabulary terms with Old French Sign Language (LSF) because a French Deaf man, Laurent Clerc, was one of the first teachers of the Deaf in the U.S. in the nineteenth century. So if you know ASL, you're better off taking a vacation in France than in England!
But the French connection to America is rare, most sign languages develop independently and each country (and in some cases, each city) has their own sign language.

Even in one country there can be differences in sign languages.
For example in the Netherlands, which is a small country.
There is one sign language named Nederlands Gebarentaal (NGT).
But there are about 5 'dialects', which are taught at the 5 different school for the deaf.
There can be small differences in some words.

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