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Which sign language to choose? | ||
Tags: Sign Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 1 of 10 14 August 2012 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been feeling more and more attraction towards sign language lately, and would really like to learn it. My problem, however, is that I currently split my time between Germany and the US, and at present I have no idea where I will be settling (if anywhere) after I complete my degree in Germany next year.
My problem is that I don't know which sign language to learn – American, German, or something else altogether. And that leads to the actual question of this post, something that's been floating around in my head for a while: how related are all the various sign languages? Are American Sign Language and Deutsche Gebärdensprache (for example) as closely/distantly related to each other as English and German? Or are they closer, more like Dutch and German? Or even like British English and American English? Or, conversely, are the various sign languages of the world all completely unrelated? The motivation behind these questions, besides idle theoretical curiosity, is also of personal practical importance: if I decide to learn ASL, will I be able to communicate with Deaf people in Germany or other countries? Or will their languages be completely foreign to me? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4703 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 2 of 10 14 August 2012 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I believe that American Sign Language is related to French sign language. They're both
part of one family (the French Sign Language family, naturally) and, as far as I understand, share a degree of mutual intelligibility just like spoken languages. Unfortunately, it looks like Deutsche Gebärdensprache and British Sign Language are completely unrelated to ASL and to each other. Here're the links to their Wiki pages as well. You can see exactly which language families they belong to and which other sign languages they afford communication with on the side. German Sign Language British Sign Language 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5009 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 10 15 August 2012 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've had an interesting conversation on this with a friend who studies communication
for/with people with hearing condition at university. (Just vague translation of the name of the area of study,sorry) There are national sign languages and an international one, which is basically a failed experiment. It is used at some conferences etc but in that case you usually have a translator from SL1 to international SL and translators translating ISL to the other SLs. People from different countries in general don't use it to communicate together. I asked her about learning more sign languages. While she doesn't learn more (at least not yet), she said it shouldn't be too hard. People from different countries, each signing only their own language, can basically understand each other. With some difficulties, without some details etc, but the base is there. So, it is a bit like choosing between related spoken languages. By choosing one, you'll certainly get a part of the other. How large part, I cannot tell but there are surely ressources on it. What really made me shake my head in disbelief was the fact that there is the Czech Sign Language and the Signed Czech. I don't know whether this exists in other countries as well but it is quite possible, since the evolution of the approach towards deaf people went through some dark times everywhere. The difference is based on a kind of obsession of some theoreticians who couldn't swallow that the Czech Sign Language is much less gramatically complex than the Czech language, and who thought it just cannot work properly without the grammar. So, they invented a way how to sign the Czech language with the grammar including declinations and conjugations. Of course, noone uses that nowadays. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| JennyMay244 Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 5577 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: German*, English, Sign Language Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 4 of 10 02 January 2014 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know this thread is a little old but I would like to know if you chose one sign language. I am learning German Sign Language and have tried some ASL as well. For me it is important to know the local sign language and I plan to maybe be an interpreter one day. However, when there is an additional sign language to learn I would pick ASL, it has already much influence on other sign languages and also on the set up International Sign.
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| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4488 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 10 04 January 2014 at 7:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Great topic! I still have a sign language book (I am not clear whether it is ASL or FSL Filipino Sign Language
but I understand both are highly related) in my study room which is on my hitlist! 5% (ideally) of the hires in my office are persons with disabilities, most of them are hearing impaired and all of them were working in my unit. I was learning their language, and one of them gave me the book to help me out. Edited by Duke100782 on 04 January 2014 at 7:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4651 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 6 of 10 04 January 2014 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
The situation is the same in Poland. The Deaf use Polish Sign Language, while the translators learn Signed Polish in official courses and confusion ensues. As for sign languages being related - they're not really, but due to the fact that signs are iconic, many of them will be similar across sign languages. Take "house" for example. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 10 04 January 2014 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||
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I once expressed the opinion that it was a little sad that there was not one single international sign language,
and the person I was speaking to got furious. I get how spoken languages, who have developed over a period of thousands of years all over the world must be different, but it seemed more practical to me to have a language based on signs, and which naturally lends itself to mutual intelligibility and which is developed within a relatively short period of time - probably less than 150 years - to exploit those possibilities, and be identical or at least similar. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 04 January 2014 at 11:38am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5046 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 8 of 10 04 January 2014 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||
I also sometimes find a single international language a cool idea, be it sign or regular. As far as sign languages go, just because they use signs doesn't mean they're any easier to unify. AFAIK (which is a little bit of Russian SL) sign languages base many of their words directly on the underlying language. So for example, the word for apricot begins with the sign for letter A in Russian, so in RSL it begins with the gest for letter A then the rest of it. AFAIU this is very common in RSL and in other sign languages. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the sound of the underlying language is directly responsible in many instances for the signs that are used in the sign language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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