Sign language used predominately in the United States
"ASL" redirects here. For other uses, see ASL (disambiguation).
"Canadian Sign Language" redirects here. For French Canadian Sign Language, see Quebec Sign Language. For the sign language specific to Canada's Atlantic provinces, see Maritime Sign Language.
French Sign-based (possibly a creole with Martha's Vineyard Sign Language)
American Sign Language
Dialects
Black American Sign
Protactile
See Varieties of American Sign Language
Writing system
None are widely accepted si5s (ASLwrite), ASL-phabet, Stokoe notation, SignWriting
Official status
Official language in
none
Recognised minority language in
Ontario only in domains of: legislation, education and judiciary proceedings.[2] 45 US states formally recognize ASL in state law; Five states recognize ASL for educational foreign language requirements, but have not formally recognized ASL as a language in their legislatures.[3]
Language codes
ISO 639-3
ase
Glottolog
asli1244 ASL family amer1248 ASL proper
Areas where ASL or a dialect/derivative thereof is the national sign language
Areas where ASL is in significant use alongside another sign language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language[4] that serves as the predominant sign language of deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features.[5] Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.
ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated widely by schools for the deaf and Deaf community organizations. Despite its wide use, no accurate count of ASL users has been taken. Reliable estimates for American ASL users range from 250,000 to 500,000 persons, including a number of children of deaf adults and other hearing individuals.
ASL signs have a number of phonemic components, such as movement of the face, the torso, and the hands. ASL is not a form of pantomime although iconicity plays a larger role in ASL than in spoken languages. English loan words are often borrowed through fingerspelling, although ASL grammar is unrelated to that of English. ASL has verbal agreement and aspectual marking and has a productive system of forming agglutinative classifiers. Many linguists believe ASL to be a subject–verb–object language. However, there are several alternative proposals to account for ASL word order.
^ abAmerican Sign Language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
^Province of Ontario (2007). "Bill 213: An Act to recognize sign language as an official language in Ontario". Archived from the original on 2018-12-24. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
^Education Policy Counsel at National Association of the Deaf. "States that Recognize American Sign Language as a Foreign Language" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
^About American Sign Language Archived 2013-05-19 at the Wayback Machine, Deaf Research Library, Karen Nakamura
^"American Sign Language". NIDCD. 2015-08-18. Archived from the original on 2016-11-15. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
and 28 Related for: American Sign Language information
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AmericanSignLanguage (ASL), the signlanguage used by the deaf community throughout most of North America, has a rich vocabulary of terms, which include...
The grammar of AmericanSignLanguage (ASL) has rules just like any other signlanguage or spoken language. ASL grammar studies date back to William Stokoe...
perhaps three hundred signlanguages in use around the world today. The number is not known with any confidence; new signlanguages emerge frequently through...
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AmericanSignLanguage literature (ASL literature) is one of the most important shared cultural experiences in the American deaf community. Literary genres...
Malaysian SignLanguage (Malay: Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia, or BIM) is the principal language of the deaf community of Malaysia. It is also the official sign language...
SignLanguage (SgSL) as a reflection of Singapore's diverse culture. SgSL is influenced by Shanghainese SignLanguage (SSL), AmericanSignLanguage (ASL)...
British SignLanguage (BSL) is a signlanguage used in the United Kingdom and is the first or preferred language among the deaf community in the UK. While...
Java. It is based on AmericanSignLanguage, with local admixture in different cities. Although presented as a coherent language when advocating for recognition...
The American Manual Alphabet (AMA) is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of AmericanSignLanguage. The letters and digits are signed as follows...
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Zealand SignLanguage or NZSL (Māori: te reo Turi) is the main language of the deaf community in New Zealand. It became an official language of New Zealand...
Dutch SignLanguage (Dutch: Nederlandse Gebarentaal or NGT; SignLanguage of the Netherlands or SLN) is the predominant signlanguage used by deaf people...
principal language, such as French SignLanguage (FSL) to spoken French and Spanish SignLanguage (SSL) to spoken Spanish. Multilingual signlanguage interpreters...
Japanese SignLanguage (日本手話, nihon-shuwa), also known by the acronym JSL, is the dominant signlanguage in Japan and is a complete natural language, distinct...
Thai SignLanguage (TSL), or Modern Standard Thai SignLanguage (MSTSL), is the national signlanguage of Thailand's deaf community and is used in most...
Global Information
