i learned that the is many languages and sign language like english and spanish sign language…how come it’s not all the same?
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i learned that the is many languages and sign language like english and spanish sign language…how come it’s not all the same?
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Because all languages have different grammatical structures, some have genders, some don’t, some use different alphabets, some have declensions of nouns, different verb conjugations.
Sputnik is right!
It’s obvious
I would love to see the signing for that African clicking language. That’d have to be a hoot to watch!
A sign language does not ‘go’ with a spoken language. Sign is completely independent.
A good demonstration of this is British Sign Language and American Sign Language. These countries both use English, however their sign systems are COMPLETELY different, it’s like Chinese compared to French.
You know how Latin gave way to Spanish, French, Italian, etc?
Same thing happened in sign, actually. French Sign Language (LSF) became really popular and many sign languages nowadays have LSF roots. Examples includes Irish, American, Mexican, Japanese sign languages. However they are still independent and are not interchangeable.
Your question is silly, it’s like asking how come spoken language isn’t universal? I mean you all can use your voice and hear right? Doesn’t make sense to me (Sarcasm)
I think there are several reasons to this:
– Sign languages were separately developed in each country, long before the world became this small, driven by necessity. So it’s quite natural sign languages differ from country to country. Newly developing a “universal” sign language might be theoretically possible, but that requires that sign-language users from all over the world first have to throw what they have learned away, and learn the universal one from the start. That might help if you often go abroad, but for those who don’t, there’s no advantage of having the language integrated – it’s just inconvenient.
– There are signs possibly offensive to certain people.
For quick example, “big brother” in Japanese Sign Language (JSL) is pretty much the same as the “f*ck you” gesture:
http://www.tgs.co.jp/signlist/lesson11_0.htm (the top-left one is “big brother”)
In Japan this doesn’t mean much of anything as a gesture, but it’s the very last thing you should do in many countries. When developing a universal language, this kind of gestures must be carefully ruled out, not only because a “universal” language shouldn’t offend anyone from any country, but also because those gestures are already “taken” in certain countries/cultures. This will require very close studies, and will significantly decrease the number of available gestures.
– People from different countries may see things differently.
For example, verbal “yes/no” in English usually translates into “hai/iie” respectively in Japanese, but it’s the other way around for negative questions. For details see:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AjEywNRGhuF2otXp2sVaNTDty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20090911120512AAtt3zi&show=7#profile-info-RUy6s7wYaa
This, of course, is the case with sign languages as well.
Since the wording itself turns out the opposite in a certain situation, the “universal” language can’t have them both – it has to choose one, throwing the other away. And those whose original method was unemployed in the “universal” language will have to learn another piece of syntax to make themselves understood.
To sum up: there’s no single “universal” sign language, because there’s no advantage of having one. At lease I see none.