I am learning ASL, and I absolutely love to travel. I think it’d be amazing if I could go to other countries and communicate to the Deaf through ASL. It might seem like a silly question since it’s AMERICAN sign language, but is ASL used in any other country? I’ve heard it’s similar to French Sign Language, not British, and i was curious about New Zealand and Australia since they are generally English speaking
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ASL originally came about from a French signer coming to the USA and teaching students (and incorporating their home signs into it as well) so that’s why it’s close to French but not British Sign Language.
Auslan and NZSL both came from British Sign Language. Some people consider them to be “dialects” of BSL, which is where the term BANZSL (British, Australian, New Zealand Sign Language) comes from. I believe it’s also used in Ireland and S. Africa and that they’re fairly mutually intelligible to one another, although not 100% so, naturally.
What Belie said.
American Sign Language is the dominant sign language of the Deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico.
ASL is also used (sometimes alongside indigenous sign languages) in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Chad, Gabon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar, and Zimbabwe, probably influenced by US missionary work.
Because of the early influence of the sign language of France upon the school founded by Gallaudet and Clerc, the vocabularies of ASL and modern French Sign Language are approximately 60% shared, whereas ASL and British Sign Language, for example, are almost completely dissimilar.