Sign Languages

Learn how language works through hands, face, body, movement, and space.

About Sign Languages

Sign languages are not pantomime and are not simply spoken languages converted into gestures. They are full natural languages that develop in Deaf communities and can express anything spoken languages can express.

Visual learning: These pages use real artifact photographs, inscriptions, sign-language references, and writing-system images from Wikimedia Commons. Final image URLs should be browser-tested.

Rosetta Stone — Rosetta StoneThe Rosetta Stone preserves the same decree in multiple writing systems and helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Ancient Inscription — Ancient InscriptionWritten inscriptions give linguists direct evidence about earlier languages.

Sign Language — Sign LanguageSign languages use hands, face, body, and space as full natural languages.

World Writing — World WritingHuman societies developed many scripts to record language.

Natural Languages

Sign languages develop naturally in communities.

ASL

American Sign Language is widely used in the United States and parts of Canada.

BSL

British Sign Language is a different language from ASL.

Visual Space

Sign languages use three-dimensional space grammatically.

Facial Expression

Facial and body movements can carry grammatical information.

Fingerspelling

Fingerspelling represents written letters with handshapes.

Deaf Culture

Sign languages are central to many Deaf communities.

Language Rights

Access to sign language supports education, communication, and participation.

Natural Languages

Children can acquire a sign language as a first language in the same way children acquire spoken language.

ASL

ASL has its own grammar and is historically influenced by French Sign Language and local signing traditions.

BSL

Even countries that share a spoken language can have unrelated sign languages.

Visual Space

Locations in signing space can represent people, objects, direction, and relationships.

Facial Expression

They are not optional emotional extras. They can mark questions, emphasis, topic structure, and other meanings.

Fingerspelling

It is useful for names and borrowed words but is only one small part of a sign language.

Deaf Culture

Schools, clubs, theaters, sports, art, storytelling, and activism all contribute to Deaf cultural life.

Language Rights

Interpreters, captions, bilingual education, and recognition of sign languages are important accessibility issues.