I should note that Shannon at one point says there are “14,000” languages in the world, because people when saying there are “7,000” languages in the world are forgetting that sign languages exist — however it is a bit presumptive to assume that there is a roughly equal number of signed languages as spoken languages.
Still, I think this is an intriguing perspective that makes me want to know more about the language dynamics and language politics of Deaf people around the world.
The worst part is that there is no standard between languages. After all, you can call an apple “apple”, " manzana", “pome”, " poma", … and it’s always the same thing. So the sign should be the same, right?
Sorry, are you implying that sign languages are just engineered representations of spoken languages? Because if you are, those are called MCLs (manually coded languages), and are completely different from sign languages.
I’ve always heard that different sign language have different signs for the same significant.
Yes, they do, but I’m just confused about why you think different sign languages should have the same sign.
To ease the communication?
If you were to force all the Deaf people of the world to use the same language, Deaf people would still communicate with their local communities far more often than communities in other countries, which means that neologisms and accents and so forth would gradually develop and accumulate, until there would eventually once again be hundreds of different regional sign languages — unless you were also continually suppressing Deaf people’s attempts to control their own languages, which is both a terrible thing to do and also not particularly sustainable in the long run.
…So by imposing a “Universal Sign Language”, you would’ve really just eradicated an enormous source of understudied language diversity and global cultural heritage, in order to not-solve a non-issue. Deaf people already have ways to communicate across language boundaries that they’re perfectly satisfied with, including, among others, the international auxiliary pidgin language used in the above video.
If I put here a 🙂 you understand that’s a smile, ever if I call it “sonrisa” or “somriure”. What I mean is “normalize” the common things between languages. Not erasing localisms. After all every language has synonyms. This could be a “common synonym”.
So you’re saying you’re in favor of Deaf people having a set of common signs to use when communicating with people from different countries, but you don’t want this to replace the local sign languages? Because if that’s what you’re getting at, then that’s just International Sign, isn’t it? That already exists and is widely used at international Deaf events.
GREAT! I was mistaken by some comments and I though it didn’t exist. I [wrongly] understood that every sign language was “tied” to the local language to the degree of not being understood in other countries.
Thank you for correcting my (flawed) knowledge 🙂
wdym? The words aren’t the same, why would the signs be?
I mean that the significant is the same. A flower is a flower, regardless of the name you give it.