Today is International Day of Sign Languages. Ten things you might not know about sign language:
Signing is used primarily by the deaf and hard of hearing, but people unable to physically speak, or who have trouble with oral language due to a disability often use it as well.
One of the earliest written records of a sign language dates to fifth century BC. In Plato's Cratylus, Socrates says: "If we hadn't a voice or a tongue, and wanted to express things to one another, wouldn't we try to make signs by moving our hands, head, and the rest of our body, just as dumb people do at present?"
Diarist Samuel Pepys mentions it too. In his diary, he described a conversation between George Downing and a deaf boy in November 1666: "But, above all, there comes in the dumb boy that I knew in Oliver's time, who is mightily acquainted here, and with Downing; and he made strange signs of the fire, and how the King was abroad, and many things they understood, but I could not…"
Today, there is no universal sign language. Each country has its own native sign language; some have more than one. the SIGN-HUB Atlas of Sign Language Structures lists over 200 and states that there may be many more which haven’t been discovered yet.
As of 2021, Indo-Pakistani Sign Language is the most-used sign language in the world.
In Britain, British Sign Language (BSL) is most commonly used. It’s not, however, the same as the English spoken language. A profoundly deaf person may consider BSL as their first language, and English their second. For example, some English words don’t have an equivalent sign, and a single sign can represent a whole sentence in English. The rules of grammar are different, too. The question ‘What is your name?’ would be expressed ‘Your name what’ along with a raised Eyebrow or tilt of the head to signify a question.
It takes seven years to fully qualify as a BSL interpreter.
BSL has been around for centuries but only became a recognised language by the British Government in 2003. Some schools even banned it in order to force deaf children to learn English and lip-reading. However, from 2025 it will be possible to study for GCSE in BSL.
For names and places or words for which there is no sign, fingerspelling is used. A BSL user may fingerspell their name when first introduced to a new person, but they’ll often have a “sign name” as well, which is shorter so people won’t have to fingerspell the entire name whenever it crops up in a conversation.
The British Sign Language Dictionary was published in 1992 and lists over 1,800 signs through pictures and diagrams. The foreword was written by Princess Diana, who was the patron of the British Deaf Association.
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