# International Sign Language?



## serbianfan

Has there ever been any attempt to create an "international sign language", like Esperanto? (probably doomed to fail, as even where one country has an official sign language, such as BSL in the UK, deaf people don't necessarily use the "official" signs). It has been said that deaf people all over the world understand each other using their own sign language - I'm not sure how true this is, especially if they don't have a common written language. If they do, and the other person doesn't understand your sign for e.g. "father", you can quickly spell it out. Some signs will be more or less universal, e.g. the signs for "I eat ice-cream", while others will not be immediately recognisable, such as "I saw my grandmother the day before yesterday".


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## Penyafort

If I recall properly, that's more or less what happened with some deaf children in Central America (I think it was Nicaragua). They would develop a sign creole of their own during their playground time by mixing the ones they already used.


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## amikama

serbianfan said:


> Has there ever been any attempt to create an "international sign language", like Esperanto?


International Sign (IS) does exist, but its linguistic status is disputed - it's unclear whether it's a full language or just an ad-hoc signing system. It's used mostly in international events such as world deaf conferences and Deaflympics, in programs aimed at international audience, etc. It's not used on the national level, and doesn't replace the national sign languages.



serbianfan said:


> It has been said that deaf people all over the world understand each other using their own sign language


That's not quite true. Most sign languages are mutually unintelligible, although they do share many grammar features, which facilitates communication between two deaf persons from different linguistic backgrounds. They may also try some ways to help their interlocutor understand them, such as simplifying signs, preferring iconic signs over opaque signs, spelling out words, etc. It's more or less like an English speaker and a Dutch speaker trying to communicate with each other.



Penyafort said:


> If I recall properly, that's more or less what happened with some deaf children in Central America (I think it was Nicaragua).


Yes, it's Nicaragua. What happened in Nicaragua is that a group of deaf children created spontaneously a sign language of their own, and this was the first time creation of a natural language was documented. Wikipedia has more information about the history and linguistics of Nicaraguan Sign Language.


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## serbianfan

It would be interesting to hear if anyone has experience of trying to communicate with sign language with someone from a different language area. 


amikama said:


> Most sign languages are mutually unintelligible, although they do share many grammar features, which facilitates communication between two deaf persons from different linguistic backgrounds. They may also try some ways to help their interlocutor understand them, such as simplifying signs, preferring iconic signs over opaque signs, spelling out words, etc. It's more or less like an English speaker and a Dutch speaker trying to communicate with each other.


I don't think we can make general statements about this situation - it will depend greatly on the relationship (if any) between the written languages. An Italian and a Spaniard will find communication far easier than e.g. an Italian and an Iranian. In the former case, if they spell out the words where they don't understand the signs, they will find a huge number that are the same or similar enough to be recognisable. In the latter case, they will have huge problems, as they don't even use the same alphabet.


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## amikama

serbianfan said:


> It would be interesting to hear if anyone has experience of trying to communicate with sign language with someone from a different language area.


When I traveled in Costa Rica, I met a local deaf person. I spoke Israeli Sign Language (but also knew a bit of ASL), and she spoke LESCO (Costa-Rican Sign Language). Although we used different sign languages, we didn't have significant communication difficulties, mostly because LESCO is quite similar to ASL so I could get the gist of what she signed to me. She could also understand most of my signs. (It should be mentioned that both of us knew Spanish, another factor that helped us communicate to each other.)

As for spelling out words, it's usually done using fingerspelling. In many sign languages (including LESCO and ISL) the fingerspelling system is based in some way on that of ASL, so I had no problem when she fingerspelled word and names to me.


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## serbianfan

amikama said:


> When I traveled in Costa Rica, I met a local deaf person. I spoke Israeli Sign Language (but also knew a bit of ASL), and she spoke LESCO (Costa-Rican Sign Language). Although we used different sign languages, we didn't have significant communication difficulties, mostly because LESCO is quite similar to ASL so I could get the gist of what she signed to me. She could also understand most of my signs. (It should be mentioned that both of us knew Spanish, another factor that helped us communicate to each other.)


That suggests that it may not be so difficult if you prepare for it, even when the written languages are very different. To take my example of an Italian and an Iranian, if the Italian arrived in Iran with no preparation, communication would be quite difficult. But if he prepared for his trip by learning a number of Iranian signs, that would not only improve communication but also make him very welcome among Iranians.


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## amikama

Even if they don't share a fingerspelling system, they can still find other ways to communicate. Fingerspelling isn't the most important component of sign languages (we don't fingerspell every word). Sign languages aren't based on written forms of spoken languages -- or on _any _form of spoken languages. Sign languages aren't related in any way to spoken languages.

The reason why two foreign Deaf persons can communicate more easily with each other compared to two foreign hearing persons is that sign languages share relatively more linguistic features (word order, facial expressions etc.) than spoken languages. Another reason is that sign languages have quite many iconic signs (signs whose meaning can be guessed by looking at them; roughly equivalent to onomatopoeias in spoken languages). In other words, sign languages tend to be more similar to each other than spoken languages.


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## serbianfan

Yes, I agree with all of that, based on my limited knowledge of Norwegian sign language (and a very small amount of BSL). But what do you think of the idea of practising before you go to another country? If you were planning to go to, say, Thailand, and were expecting to meet some deaf people, would you just go and hope for the best, or would you, before you went, find some Thai signs on the Internet and spend many hours practising the ones you were most likely to need and which were not immediately recognisable?


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