For the 7th week of the Five Fun Facts about Languages series, we’re doing something a bit different and looking at a global language, or rather languages, which are completely different from any of the others we’ve looked at so far. Abandoning the world of spoken language, this week we present our Five Fun Facts about Sign Language!
1) Sign language shares many similarities with spoken language, and both are considered to be ‘natural languages’ by linguists. However, instead of using sound patterns, sign language conveys meaning through manual communication and body language, such as hand shapes, hand, arm or body movements and facial expressions.
2) The fact that sign languages have developed naturally, instead of being artificially created, means that hundreds of different sign languages are used around the world. Just as an English speaker would not be able to understand somebody speaking to them in Japanese, a user of English sign language cannot understand a user of Japanese sign language. In fact, even ‘English’ sign languages are very different, with American Sign Language being closer to the French version than the British.
Different sign languages use different words. This is the word for 'maths' in American and Japanese sign languages.
3) Sign languages have been used by groups of deaf people throughout history. We have evidence for the use of sign language from as early as the fifth century BCE, in Plato’s Cratylus. In it, Socrates observes “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?" Juan Pablo Bonet’s 1620 publication, Reducción de las letras y arte para enseñar a hablar a los mudo, is the first modern treatise of sign language phonetics, setting out a method of oral education for deaf people and a manual alphabet.
4) Sign languages are not mime and do not have to have a visual relationship to the things that the words express. They have complex grammars and, like spoken languages, organise meaningless phonemes (or cheremes) into meaningful semantic units.
In Czech sign language this means "Life is beautiful, be happy and love each other."
5) Just as with spoken languages, children who are exposed to sign language from birth will naturally acquire the ability to communicate using it.
Come back next Thursday for five fun facts about Hindi!
Andrew Wardell
Editorial Assistant | Linguistics
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