- published: 13 Oct 2012
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American Sign Language (ASL) is a sign language, a language in which the hands, arms, head, facial expression and body language are used to speak without sound. ASL is not related to English, and features an entirely different grammar and vocabulary. In the 1960s, ASL was sometimes referred to as "Ameslan" but this term is now obsolete.
ASL is the dominant sign language of deaf communities in the United States and English-speaking parts of Canada. Although the United Kingdom and the United States / Canada share English as a common oral and written language, British Sign Language (BSL) is a completely different language from ASL, and they are not mutually intelligible. ASL is instead related to French Sign Language.
Besides North America, dialects of ASL or ASL-based creoles are used, sometimes alongside indigenous sign languages, in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Chad, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Barbados, Bolivia, China, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica. Like other sign languages, its grammar and syntax are distinct from any spoken language, including English.
A sign language (also signed language) is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses manual communication and body language to convey meaning. This can involve simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's thoughts.
Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages develop. While they utilize space for grammar in a way that spoken languages do not, sign languages exhibit the same linguistic properties and use the same language faculty as do spoken languages. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world and are at the cores of local deaf cultures. Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all.
One of the earliest written records of a signed language occurred in the fifth century BC, in Plato's Cratylus, where 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?" It seems that groups of deaf people have used signed languages throughout history.
by Bob Dylan
You speak to me in sign language,
As I'm eating a sandwich in a small cafe
At a quarter to three.
But I can't respond to your sign language.
You're taking advantage, bringing me down.
Can't you make any sound?
'Twas there by the bakery, surrounded by fakery.
This is my story, still I'm still there.
Does she know I still care?
Link Wray was playing on a jukebox, I was paying
For the words I was saying, so misunderstood.
He didn't do me no good.
First Verse
Second Verse